Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:54:04 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/ VermontBSD Administration en-us http://www.vtbsd.net/images/logo.gif http://www.vtbsd.net/ scott@sremick.net http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=215 The April - June, 2008 Status Reports are now available with 14 entries. Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:54:04 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=214 The PC-BSD project has posted a status update on PC-BSD 7 on their website. It will be based on FreeBSD 7, and include KDE 4.1 as the primary desktop interface. Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:37:40 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=213 The FreeBSD Foundation has published their Semi-Annual July 2008 newsletter which summarizes what they have done to help the FreeBSD Project and community. Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:18:27 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=212 iXsystems announced today the launch of its Professional Services Division for FreeBSD and PC-BSD. The new Professional Services Division will provide Professional Enterprise Grade support, consulting, and development for FreeBSD and PC-BSD. Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:47:10 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=211 The first issues of the new BSD Magazine have finally been delivered. This issue includes the following articles: * Dru Lavigne, FreeBSD 7.0 Installation and Configuration * Michael Lucas, FreeBSD's bsnmp * Jan Stedehouder, Pushing BSD an an Open Source Desktop * Svetoslav Chukov, PC-BSD Overview * Richard Bejtlich, Sguil 0.7.0 on FreeBSD 7.0 * Jay Kruizenga, How to Dual-Boot Vista with BSD * Peter Hansteen, Keep Smiling, Waste Spammers' Time * Henrik Lund Kramshoj, Defense in Depth and FOSS * Donald Hayford, NetBSD on the NSSSSLU2 * Girish Venkatachalam, OpenBSD pf * Eric Schnoebelen, Instant Messaging with jabber/XMPP * Federico Biancuzzi, Interview with FreeBSD Developer Jeff Roberson * Mikel King, What is in a Certification * Henrik Lund Kramshoj, Review of the Book of PF It also includes a DVD with FreeBSD 7. Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:09:47 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=210 The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce the release of OpenOffice.org 2.4, the latest version of the leading open source office productivity suite. OpenOffice.org 2.4 includes many new features, enhancements, and bug fixes to all its core components. OpenOffice.org 2.4 is available for immediate download and the new features are described on the wiki. Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:37:27 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=209 The student application period for the Google Summer of Code 2008 program has begun. Please peruse our list of FreeBSD specific projects and potential mentors and prepare your application before the March 31 deadline. Earlier applications are encouraged as this provides an opportunity for potential mentors to work on improving the applications with students before the deadline. Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:30:51 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=208 The FreeBSD GNOME team is proud to annunce the release of GNOME 2.22.0 for FreeBSD. The official GNOME 2.22 release notes can be found at http://library.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/2.22/ . On the FreeBSD front, this release features an updated hal port with support for video4linux devices, DRM (Direct Rendering), and better support of removable media. Work is also underway to tie webkit more closely into GNOME. As part of the GNOME 2.22 upgrade, GStreamer received a rather large upgrade as well. Be sure to consult UPDATING on the proper steps to upgrade all of your GNOME ports. Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:17:44 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=207 OOO Ninja has an early preview with screenshots of what's coming up in OpenOffice 3.0, due out later this year. Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:44:21 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=206 Ars Technica has a nice article where they talk about the latest tests done on Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 7, Opera, and Firefox 2 comparing memory usage. The results are promising, with Firefox 3 using only half the memory of Firefox 2 under heavy testing (50 tabs). Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:44:44 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=205 The FreeBSD Project will soon be accepting applications for the Google Summer of Code 2008 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. Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:35:03 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=204 The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD version 1.5! This release includes many new features and fixes, including the following: * NEW System Updater tool - Keeps system & PBIs up to date - Allows override variables, so that admins can use their own mirrors / servers to roll out updates to users. * NEW sound detection program! Uses XML backend to identify and load modules * NEW amd64 build of 1.5, including PBIs that are on our auto-build server * NEW PBI icon preview library, now a PBI file shows the embedded icon on your desktop, not the generic "PBI" format icon * Xorg 7.3 * KDE 3.5.8 * FreeBSD 6.3 Release This release is now available to be downloaded from mirrors around the world. Additionally for users who are running PC-BSD 1.4 or 1,3, a installable update will be released in the next few days which migrates a system to version 1.5. Please watch www.pcbsd.org for more information! * 1.5 Changelog * 1.5 Release Notes * 1.5 Press Release * Download PC-BSD 1.5 Now! Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:16:43 -0400 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=203 Yousef Ourabi has written a glowing review of FreeBSD 7.0 over at Free Software Magazine. Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:47:43 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=202 In issue 242 of DistroWatch Weekly, they take a look at the new FreeBSD 7.0 and evaluate its suitability as a desktop OS. A short review, but positive. Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:18:10 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=201 After 16 months of development, pfSense 1.2 has been released. pfSense is a router/firewall based upon FreeBSD. Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:22:08 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=200 There's a nice article by Sean Michael Kerner over at InternetNews that talks about a lot of the improvements in FreeBSD 7.0. The title of the article comes from thoughts that, with FreeBSD 7.0 providing better performance on a given system than other operating systems, it allows one to deploy fewer systems to handle the same workload. Mon, 03 Mar 2008 03:38:10 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=199 FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE is now available. The release errata will be updated with late-breaking news and/or issues with 7.0, and should be consulted before installation. For more information about FreeBSD releases, see the Release Information page. Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:39:09 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=198 There's a nice interview over on ONLamp's BSD DevCenter: "The day has come... FreeBSD is back to its incredible performance and now can take advantage of multi-core/CPUs systems very well... so well that some benchmarks on both Intel and AMD systems showed release 7.0 being faster than Linux 2.6 when running PostreSQL or MySQL. Federico Biancuzzi interviewed two dozen developers to discuss all the cool details of FreeBSD 7.0: networking and SMP performance, SCTP support, the new IPSEC stack, virtualization, monitoring frameworks, ports, storage limits and a new journaling facility, what changed in the accounting file format, jemalloc(), ULE, and more." Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:51:04 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=197 The FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report, covering the period of October through December 2007, is now available with 25 entries. Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:28:01 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=196 Looks like there are some more paper forms of FreeBSD reading material coming on the horizon. First, we can be expecting a new BSD-based magazine coming sometime mid-2008, called (surprisingly enough) "BSD Magazine". You can reserve the premier issue now for $9.99 or get a year's subscription (4 issues) for $39.99. Looks like the normal price will be $15/issue. More information is available: at http://bsdmag.org/ Next, word is that a future issue of Linux Identity magazine will be devoted entirely to the upcoming FreeBSD 7.0 release. No other details yet, but keep an eye out. Lastly, be sure to check out the upcoming book "BSD UNIX Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD" by Christopher Negus and Francois Caen. It's available for pre-order now from Amazon for $16.49. Looks like it's due around May 12th. Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:04:24 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=195 The second release candidate of FreeBSD 7.0 is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. You can read the official announcement with more details here. Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:13:26 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=194 In a nod to the quality of FreeBSD, Michael John Ventnor has written on his weblog that the latest Firefox nightlies now have jemalloc enabled by default. jemalloc is FreeBSD's memory allocator, and Firefox 3 will be using it as its own internal memory allocator on all platforms. He reports that it's not only faster than the platforms' own allocators, but it results in less fragmentation. Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:52:07 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=193 The Netcraft numbers for January 2008 are in, and once again FreeBSD does extremely well. FreeBSD-powered Swishmail retains first place for the second month in a row, with other FreeBSD-powered webhosts holding third, fifth, and sixth places. Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:50:58 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=192 "The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce that after months of hard work the updated www.pbidir.com site is now available! The site now includes screen-shots of applications, comments, user logins and much, much more! We have also populated the site with a large batch of our first PBIs built from the new PBI Auto-Build system, which will enable us to release more polished, and timely PBI releases of your favorite applications." Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:10:39 -0500 http://www.vtbsd.net/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=191 Troy Dreier over at Internet Journal has written up a nice introduction to OpenOffice. While not new news and probably nothing FreeBSD users don't already know, it's still nice to see OpenOffice getting positive press like this, and the article could be good material to show to people you're trying to get to switch. Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:20:10 -0500