FreeBSD 9.0 Arrives w/ DTrace, Clang, ZFS Updates

After multiple delays spanning several months, FreeBSD 9.0 is being officially released today. While it comes late, at least there's many significant improvements.

Per the release announcement, some of the FreeBSD 9.0 highlights include:

- A new installer. It's an improvement over the previous installer, but it's still text-based and not really superior to the Debian installer, Red Hat's Anaconda, Ubuntu's Ubiquity, etc. At least the PC-BSD crew has a nice installer for desktop users.

- Version 28 of the Oracle/Sun ZFS file-system is now integrated. The Fast Filesystem also now supports soft-updates journaling.

- ATA/SATA drivers now support AHCI within the CAM framework. Highly Available Storage (HAST) framework has also been integrated.

- User-level DTrace support.

- An updated NFS implementation.

- Sony PlayStation 3 support by their PowerPC architecture port.

- The LLVM compiler and the C/C++ Clang compiler front-end have been imported.

- KDE SC 4.7.3 and GNOME 2.32.1 are available as desktop options.

There's also newer hardware support, but the graphics drivers remain in a horrible state.

Expect new FreeBSD 9.0 benchmarks soon.

For those wanting to try out FreeBSD 9.0 on a desktop or in just a really easy-to-use manner, try out PC-BSD 9.0 for the KDE desktop experience. GhostBSD 2.5 also provides a nice GNOME experience and is built atop FreeBSD 9.0.