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FreeBSD News

December 2005

  • 23 December, 2005: The FreeBSD Foundation has published its December Newsletter, which summarizes the activities the Foundation has undertaken this year.

  • 21 December, 2005: Returned committer: Jason Evans (src)

  • 17 December, 2005: The release engineering team, represented by Scott Long, has announced the release schedule for 2006. Please refer to the announcement for more information.

  • 14 December, 2005: Read-only support for the XFS file system has been committed to FreeBSD-CURRENT. The code is derived from sources provided by SGI and is covered by the GPL. Additional information can be found in the announcement.

  • 12 December, 2005: New committer: Andrey Slusar (ports)

  • 7 December, 2005: The FreeBSD project has hundreds of active developers spread all over the world, and many of them have their own parts of the source-tree that they work on. However, there are always a lot of new interesting projects and ideas that needs to be investigated and evaluated, and this is where the FreeBSD project relies on heroic efforts from volunteers. A new section on the FreeBSD website has been created with the purpose of listing such projects. The list is in no way complete, but it should serve as a nice starting point for volunteers who would like to become committers in the future. You can view the projects list here.

  • 1 December, 2005: 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. You can see more details from here.

  • 1 December, 2005: New committer: Tim Bishop (ports)

November 2005

  • 29 November, 2005: New committer: Oleg Bulyzhin (src)

  • 27 November, 2005: A new article, Building Products with FreeBSD describes the benefits of collaborating with the FreeBSD project when developing products. Much of the engineering cost of software product development for a successful product comes from the need to evolve to keep pace with the market. By working with a mature, reuse-friendly source base like that of the FreeBSD project, and by following the best-practices listed in this article, organizations can reap the benefits of reduced engineering costs and improved market adaptability.

  • 18 November, 2005: The July-October, 2005 status report is now available with 37 entries.

  • 5 November, 2005: KDE 3.4.3 has been merged into the ports tree. For a detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.4.2 release, please refer to the KDE 3.4.2 changelog. For more information, see the KDE 3.4.3 info page. For general information about KDE on FreeBSD, please see the KDE on FreeBSD project page.

  • 5 November, 2005: Now that 6.0 is out the door, GNOME 2.12.1 has been merged into the ports tree. Be sure to checkout our upgrade FAQ for all the changes, upgrade instructions, and known issues. Additional resources can be found at the FreeBSD GNOME homepage.

  • 4 November, 2005: FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 6.0. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.

  • 1 November, 2005: We are pleased to announce the winner of our logo competition: Anton K. Gural. For competition details, please see the result page. With our new logo, we will be able to show our own identity on the 'net, and this will make our marketing efforts much easier. We will publish soon a guideline page which gives usage rules and usable (vector format) logo data under the same BSD license as the rest of FreeBSD.

October 2005

  • 30 October, 2005: New committer: Aaron Dalton (ports)

  • 18 October, 2005: New committer: Ariff Abdullah (src)

  • 11 October, 2005: The first release candidate of FreeBSD 6.0 is now available. The RC1 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.

  • 6 October, 2005: A new case study, argentina.com, describes how a successful ISP in Latin America excels in a competitive market with FreeBSD.

  • 5 October, 2005: A new website has been launched. We hope you find the new design easier to navigate. The site was implemented by Emily Boyd as part of Google's Summer of Code program. A copy of the old site for comparison purposes is archived here. Please post your comments and suggestions about the new site to the [email protected] list.

  • 3 October, 2005: New committer: Vitaly Bogdanov (doc)

  • 3 October, 2005: New committer: Emanuel Haupt (ports)

  • 3 October, 2005: New committer: Andrej Zverev (ports)

September 2005

August 2005

  • 29 August, 2005: 6.0-BETA3 announcement.

  • 22 August, 2005: New committer: Gary W. Swearingen (doc)

  • 21 August, 2005: After 43 months Jacques Vidrine has passed the Security Officer hat to Colin Percival, known for his FreeBSD Update, portsnap, and bsdiff utilities, and recently for his paper "Cache missing for fun and profit" regarding sensitive information disclosure within hyperthreaded processor systems. You can read more about this here.

  • 17 August, 2005: Users with organisational software that understands iCalendar format files can now subscribe to the FreeBSD Events Calendar.

  • 17 August, 2005: A new article, Choosing the FreeBSD Version That Is Right For You, discusses considerations that should go into the selection of the most suitable version of FreeBSD for individual needs. Included are such concepts as the differences between a Release and a Branch, and between FreeBSD-STABLE and FreeBSD-CURRENT. Also covered is how FreeBSD development is moving towards a goal of more frequent major releases, each of which introduces smaller feature sets, as compared to how releases were done in the past. The target audience is both the user who is considering installing FreeBSD, and also existing users who wish to plan their future upgrades.

  • 5 August, 2005: 6.0-BETA2 announcement.

  • 1 August, 2005: Dru Lavigne has just published FreeBSD: An Open Source Alternative to Linux. The objective of this whitepaper is to explain some of the features and benefits provided by FreeBSD, and where applicable, compare those features to Linux. This paper provides a starting point for those interested in exploring Open Source alternatives to Linux.

July 2005

  • 22 July, 2005: The March-June, 2005 status report is now available with 43 entries.

  • 20 July, 2005: New committer: Vsevolod Stakhov (ports)

  • 18 July, 2005: New committer: Bruno Ducrot (src)

  • 16 July, 2005: The FreeBSD Project received over 350 applications for Google's Summer of Code program, amongst which 18 were selected for funding. Unfortunately, there were far more first rate applications than available spots for students. However, we encourage students to work together with us all year round. The FreeBSD Project is always willing to help mentor students learn more about operating system development through our normal community mailing lists and development forums. Contributing to an open source software project is a valuable component of a computer science education and great preparation for a career in software development.

    More information about the funded student projects is available from the FreeBSD Summer of Code Wiki.

  • 15 July, 2005: 6.0-BETA1 announcement.

  • 11 July, 2005: Next milestone in 6.0-RELEASE process is reached. RELENG_6 CVS branch is forked from HEAD. The upcoming 6.0-RELEASE, and all following 6.x releases will be cut from this branch. For more information see: 6.0-RELEASE schedule, RELENG_6 announcement.

  • 11 July, 2005: New committer: Renato Botelho (ports)

  • 6 July, 2005: New committer: Jung-uk Kim (src)

  • 2 July, 2005: The FreeBSD 6-CURRENT snapshot releases in July 2005 are now available. This will likely be the last snapshot of 6.0-CURRENT before the RELENG_6 branch is made. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has released snapshot releases of 5-STABLE and 6-CURRENT to encourage people to test new features and improve the reliability. For more details, please visit the snapshots page.

  • 1 July, 2005: New committer: Wayne Salamon (src)

June 2005

  • 17 June, 2005: New contributor: Matteo Riondato (PR database)

  • 17 June, 2005: New committer: Kip Macy (src)

  • 11 June, 2005: The FreeBSD 6.0 code freeze has begun. Developers must have approval from [email protected] to commit to the HEAD branch of src/. 6.0 snapshots are available from the FTP sites for those able to help test the upcoming major new release of FreeBSD. For more information, please see the release engineering area of the web site.

  • 1 June, 2005: The FreeBSD Project is happy to participate in Google's Summer of Code 2005 program. This program will provide funding for students to spend the summer contributing to open source software projects. A list of FreeBSD specific projects and potential mentors is available here.

  • 1 June, 2005: New committer: Brad Davis (doc)

May 2005

  • 26 May, 2005: New committer: Andrew Thompson (src)

  • 21 May, 2005: New committer: Craig Rodrigues (src)

  • 15 May, 2005: Another great BSD conference in Ottawa has just concluded. There was a highly successful 2 day FreeBSD Developer summit preceding the official conference. Special thanks should go to Dan Langille for organizing the conference and to Scott Long for organizing the developer summit.

  • 9 May, 2005: FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 5.4. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.

  • 3 May, 2005: The FreeBSD 5.4-RC4 release is now available. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC4, the last Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 unless a major problem is discovered as part of RC4. The RC4 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.

  • 3 May, 2005: The packet filter (pf) code has been updated to the upcoming OpenBSD release 3.7. Several new features including nested anchors and connection rate limiting are now available to the FreeBSD userbase.

April 2005

  • 21 April, 2005: The January-March, 2005 status report is now available with 39 entries.

  • 18 April, 2005: The FreeBSD 5.4-RC3 release is now available. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC3, the third Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. The RC3 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.

  • 13 April, 2005: New committer: Qing Li (src)

  • 12 April, 2005: New committer: Jean-Yves Lefort (ports)

  • 12 April, 2005: New committer: Sam Lawrance (ports)

  • 11 April, 2005: The FreeBSD 5.4-RC2 release is now available. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC2, the second Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. We encourage people to help with testing so that any final bugs can be identified and worked out before the actual release. The RC2 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.

  • 7 April, 2005: New committer: Joel Dahl (doc)

  • 5 April, 2005: The FreeBSD 5.4-RC1 release is now available. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RC1, the first Release Candidate of the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle. We encourage people to help with testing so that any final bugs can be identified and worked out before the actual release. The RC1 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.

March 2005

  • 31 March, 2005: Enhanced commit privileges: Alexander Leidinger (src, ports)

  • 20 March, 2005: The FreeBSD 5.4-BETA1 release is now available. This is the first BETA release for the FreeBSD 5.4 release cycle and the Release Engineering Team encourages people to help with testing so that any final bugs can be identified and worked out before the actual release. The BETA1 ISO images and FTP based install support are available on most of the FreeBSD Mirror sites.

  • 17 March, 2005: The FreeBSD 6-CURRENT snapshot releases in March 2005 are now available. Note that 5-STABLE snapshots are not available in this month because 5.4-PRERELEASE builds will be available soon. The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has released snapshot releases of 5-STABLE and 6-CURRENT on a monthly basis to encourage people to test new features and improve the reliability. For more details, please visit the snapshots page.

  • 12 March, 2005: GNOME 2.10.0 has been released and merged into the ports tree in time for 5.4-RELEASE. Be sure to checkout our upgrade FAQ for all the changes, upgrade instructions, and known issues. Additional resources can be found at the FreeBSD GNOME homepage.

  • 7 March, 2005: New committer: Roman Bogorodskiy (ports)

  • 3 March, 2005: New committer: Damien Bergamini (src)

  • 1 March, 2005: New committer: Jesus R. Camou (doc)

  • 1 March, 2005: New committer: Florent Thoumie (ports)

February 2005

January 2005

  • 25 January, 2005: FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE has been released. Please check the release errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 4.11. The Release Information page has more information about FreeBSD releases.

  • 17 January, 2005: The July-December, 2004 status report is now available with 44 entries.

  • 17 January, 2005: The third Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.11 has been made available. Please see the full announcement on the FreeBSD-STABLE mailing list here. The full 4.11 release schedule is here.

  • 2 January, 2005: The second Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.11 has been made available. Please see the full announcement on the FreeBSD-STABLE mailing list here. The full 4.11 release schedule is here.

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