BSD News Archives

FreeBSD 14 has been released as stable today as the newest major release of this leading open-source BSD operating system.

FreeBSD developers have been busy preparing for the release of FreeBSD 14 as well as making a variety of enhancements to this leading BSD operating system.

NetBSD 10 has been in development since late 2019 and the beta release is already a year old while now it's up to the release candidate phase with the availability of NetBSD 10-RC1.

FreeBSD 14.0-RC4 was issued today and as a last minute change they have decided to keep (non-PNP) ISA and GIANT-locked drivers around until FreeBSD 15.

GhostBSD 23.10.1 released this weekend as the newest version of this FreeBSD-based desktop-focused operating system that employs the GNOME2-forked MATE desktop by default.

FreeBSD 14.0 is preparing for release in early November as a big update to this leading BSD operating system. It's going to be a great release and Friday's FreeBSD 14.0-RC2 milestone landed some last minute updates.

Theo de Raadt released OpenBSD 7.4 today as the open-source BSD operating system project's 55th release.

The release candidate is out this weekend for FreeBSD 14.0 as the developers work toward releasing FreeBSD 14 stable in early November.

When it comes to the BSD operating systems, DragonFlyBSD's HAMMER2 is one of the most interesting innovations. HAMMER2 supports online deduplication, clustering, multiple mountable file-system roots, snapshots, compression, encryption, extensive checksumming, and other features. Over the past decade it's evolved quite nicely and in recent days has seen further enhancements.

FreeBSD 14 Beta 1 is available this weekend for helping to test out this major BSD operating system update that should debut as stable before the end of October.

MidnightBSD 3.1 is now available for this desktop-minded, FreeBSD-forked operating system that aims to be "the BSD for everyone" with an Xfce-based desktop and focus on ease of use.

The new nvidia-drm-kmod is a FreeBSD port of Linux's nvidia-drm.ko open-source kernel module.

Last week the FreeBSD 14 alpha phase kicked off and available today is the second weekly alpha release for this upcoming major BSD operating system update.

FreeBSD developers have published their Q2-2023 status report where they outlined various technical milestones and software accomplishments for this leading BSD operating system.

Within the very latest OpenBSD "current" code is now support for being able to apply AMD CPU microcode updates.

This month the FreeBSD project is celebrating its 30th anniversary since this open-source BSD operating system project was established.

This week the FreeBSD project published their Q1-2023 status report that outlines various technical and organization accomplishments made for the past quarter.

Following some minor delays due to additional release candidates, FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE is now officially available as this latest FreeBSD operating system update ahead of FreeBSD 14.0 debuting this summer.

Theo de Raadt has released OpenBSD 7.3 today as the 54th release for this BSD operating system project.

Building off last month's release of MidnightBSD 3.0 for this desktop-focused, FreeBSD-forked operating system the v3.0.1 update is now available.

FreeBSD 13.2-RC4 was scheduled to be the last release candidate for this BSD operating system update but then 13.2-RC5 came with one fix. Now in dragging out the release into April, FreeBSD 13.2-RC6 has been released with another fix.

FreeBSD 13.2-RC4 was released this weekend while it's already been replaced by FreeBSD 13.2-RC5 to land one more fix prior to making the final release preparations on this next stable update to this BSD operating system.

FreeBSD 13.2-RC4 is now available with a few more fixes for this BSD operating system update. A FreeBSD 13.2-RC5 release is also inbound as an extra release candidate with one more bug fix, after which the stable release should happen.

MidnightBSD as the desktop-focused OS forked from FreeBSD and relying on the Xfce desktop environment by default is out with its big MidnightBSD 3.0 update.

The third and potentially last release candidate of FreeBSD 13.2 is now available for testing ahead of the planned stable 13.2-RELEASE around the end of March.

Full disk encryption is quite important in today's computing environment while some operating systems still sadly don't provide an easy and streamlined manner of setting up an encrypted disk at install-time. Thankfully with the next release of OpenBSD, they are introducing a guided disk encryption option to their installer.

FreeBSD 13.2 Beta 3 is now available in providing the latest test release for this forthcoming update to the FreeBSD 13 stable series.

It's not too often I get to talk about major FreeBSD graphics driver improvements, but with the latest X.Org Server Git code paired with the recent NVIDIA proprietary graphics driver there is now support for PRIME render offload should you be using a multi-GPU setup on this BSD.

The first beta of the upcoming FreeBSD 13.2 point release is now available for testing this Valentine's Day with some great features in tow.

The BSD operating system projects tend to not receive as much support from hardware vendors as Linux and their driver support is made even more fragmented on the BSD side due to many subtle as well as not so subtle differences between the major BSDs. NetBSD developer Pierre Pronchery has proposed more "harmony" among BSD drivers with increased collaboration between the major BSD players on driver development.

For those that may have tried the recent macOS-inspired helloSystem 0.8 release for that desktop-focused FreeBSD-based operating system, if that didn't satisfy your desktop BSD desires, MidnightBSD 3.0 is working its way to release as another alternative.

FreeBSD has published its 2022'Q4 quarterly status report that outlines all of the progress made by this open-source BSD operating system project.

Following the demise of PC-BSD/TrueOS, the most compelling BSD-based desktop operating system with a pleasant out-of-the-box user experience is helloSystem. The helloSystem OS has been aiming to be the macOS of the BSDs and for the past few years has been building a macOS-inspired desktop atop FreeBSD. Out today is helloSystem 0.8 as their newest version built atop FreeBSD 13.1.

NetBSD continues using the FFS file-system by default while it's offered ZFS support that has been slowly improving -- in NetBSD-CURRENT is the ability to use ZFS as the root file-system if first booting to FFS, for example. There may be another modern file-system option soon with an effort underway to port DragonFlyBSD's HAMMER2 over to NetBSD.

DragonFlyBSD 6.4 is now available as the newest version of this open-source BSD operating system forked long ago from FreeBSD.

After being in development for three years the first beta builds of the upcoming NetBSD 10.0 operating system release are now available for testing.

For FreeBSD users not yet on the FreeBSD 13 stable series, FreeBSD 12.4 is now available as the newest point release to that N-1 series.

It's been a while since trying out the BSD operating systems on bleeding-edge hardware while a Phoronix Premium recently asked about the BSDs on Raptor Lake. Well, here are my initial experiences trying to run FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonflyBSD on the Intel Core i9 13900K desktop.

Back in late 2020 FreeBSD initially landed WireGuard support ahead of FreeBSD 13. But then during the FreeBSD 13 release candidate phase, the WireGuard driver was removed over concerns over the quality of the initial implementation.

FreeBSD had a busy Friday with releasing their first beta of the upcoming FreeBSD 12.4 as well as publishing their third quarter development summary.

Coming on the same day as Ubuntu 22.10, Theo de Raadt has released OpenBSD 7.2 as the latest version of this popular BSD operating system.

The FreeBSD release engineering team has published their initial release plans for FreeBSD 14.0 as well as follow-on FreeBSD 13.2 and 12.4 releases for the current stable series of this BSD operating system.

Open-source firmware consulting firm 3mdeb last year worked on Fwupd support for FreeBSD so system firmware updates can be more easily handled on that popular BSD operating system and leveraging the Fwupd/LVFS infrastructure that's been happening for years in the Linux space. Their most recent target is now DragonFlyBSD for handling of UEFI firmware updates with Fwupd.

The FreeBSD project has published their latest quarterly status report highlighting the advancements made to this open-source BSD operating system.

NetBSD 9.3 has been released as the newest version of this open-source BSD operating system known for running on many diverse platforms thanks to its focus on code portability.

Out this weekend is a new version of GhostBSD, the desktop-focused operating system built atop a FreeBSD base and catering to the MATE desktop environment.

FreeBSD a few days ago published its Q1'2022 status report highlighting all the advancements made by this open-source operating system project.

DragonFlyBSD 6.2 was introduced back in January with the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver port, HAMMER2 improvements, and the NVMM hypervisor port, among other improvements. Out this weekend is DragonFlyBSD 6.2.2 with various bug-fixes atop that stable code-base.

After taking a few extra weeks to bake, FreeBSD 13.1 is out today as the newest stable release of this leading BSD operating system.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE was supposed to be out by the end of April but lingering bugs have yielded extra release candidates for this latest BSD operating system update.