OpenBSD 6.7 was released this morning as the newest version of this security-minded BSD operating system.

It's arguably long overdue but OpenBSD is seeing initial work on POWERPC64 enablement landing in its source tree.

With the WireGuard secure VPN tunnel having been upstreamed in the Linux 5.6 kernel, developer attention recently turned to OpenBSD and porting the very promising VPN technology to its kernel.

DragonFlyBSD 5.8 debuted in March while now shipping is v5.8.1 as the latest update for this BSD operating system.

GhostBSD 20.04 is out as the newest monthly update to this desktop-focused operating system built off the FreeBSD base.

While the Open Sound System (OSS) usage hasn't been prevalent on Linux systems in many years, on NetBSD there still is some software making use of the OSS interfaces in not supporting the native NetBSD audio interfaces. Better OSS compatibility via a translation layer is available while ultimately they are working on transitioning more open-source software to support the native interfaces.

Thanks to a FreeBSD Foundation Community Grant, FreeBSD 13 will be bringing up to a 5x performance improvement for if_bridge, the kernel code for network bridge device support.

FreeBSD may be running great on servers at the likes of Netflix, but when it comes to running the BSD operating system on laptops it still is largely a giant mess.

This weekend the FreeBSD project published their quarterly status report concerning Q1'2020 and the progress they made on many fronts.

While NetBSD 9.0 has been out since mid-February, for those still on the NetBSD 8 series the NetBSD 8.2 milestone is now available with various fixes. As a result of the coronavirus, the NetBSD 7 series is also being extended.

If you are looking for a new desktop-friendly BSD with TrueOS being phased out, GhostBSD 20.03 is out as the promising desktop-focused OS based on FreeBSD and using the MATE desktop environment as a decent out-of-the-box experience.

It's been on life support for a while but to much sadness, TrueOS indeed is no longer being maintained as the once very promising downstream of FreeBSD that for a while offered arguably the best out-of-the-box BSD desktop experience.

TrueNAS 12.0 CORE, which up until the new TrueNAS / FreeNAS branding unification would have been called FreeNAS, will in its next release support ZFS async copy-on-write functionality.

The os108 project is one of the few (or only?) distributions based on NetBSD currently providing a MATE-based desktop experience atop this BSD. The os108 9.0 release is now available that re-bases against the recent NetBSD 9.0 release while continuing to provide its out-of-the-box desktop goodness.

While Windows and Linux have seen good 802.11ac "WiFi 5" support and these days are focused on 802.11ax "WiFi 6" with the latest wireless chipsets, FreeBSD is still tackling 802.11ac. But the FreeBSD Foundation is prepared to soon begin sponsoring development work on ironing out their 802.11ac support.

BSD-focused vendor iXsystems has developed FreeNAS as their community-oriented NAS operating system while TrueNAS is what they ship on their storage solutions. FreeNAS and TrueNAS have been derived largely from the same code-base. Moving forward to TrueNAS 12.0 later this year, iXsystems is unifying FreeNAS and TrueNAS.

DragonFlyBSD 5.8.0 release images began propagating tonight as the latest installment of this long ago forked FreeBSD operating system.

For those looking to experiment with a BSD-based desktop open-source platform, GhostBSD has been competing well as one of the few in this field. GhostBSD 20.02 is out and continues being based on TrueOS/FreeBSD stable packages while shipping the GTK-based MATE desktop environment as its out-of-the-box desktop solution.

Not only did NetBSD 9.0 make its debut today but DragonFlyBSD 5.8 was branched and its first release candidate made while DragonFlyBSD 5.9 is the version now open on Git master.

NetBSD 9.0 is out today as for what the project is hoping as the "best NetBSD release ever" at least until NetBSD 10 down the road.

It's been a while since last having any new magical optimizations to talk about by DragonFlyBSD lead developer Matthew Dillon, but on Wednesday he landed some significant temporary file-system "TMPFS" optimizations for better throughput including with swap.

Hikari is a stacking window manager with tiling support that has also work-in-progress code for serving as a Wayland compositor. However, unlike most X11 window managers and Wayland compositors being focused on Linux systems, Hikari is BSD-focused.

The second release candidate of NetBSD 9.0 is now available for testing of what should be the last test candidate before the stable NetBSD 9 unveiling in the very near future.

Out this weekend is Lumina 1.6 as the latest release of this Qt-powered desktop environment originally developed by iXsystems as part of PC-BSD / TrueOS.

The folks at iXsystems have released FreeNAS 11.3, their latest big update to this FreeBSD-based operating system designed around the OpenZFS file-system for offering advanced network-attached storage capabilities.

The FreeBSD project has issued their last quarterly status update for 2019.

The release candidate of OPNsense 20.1 is available this weekend, the FreeBSD/HardenedBSD-based networking/firewall OS that forked from pfSense now a half-decade ago.

GhostBSD 20.01 is out today as the first release of 2020 for this desktop-focused BSD operating system built off FreeBSD.

The Linux 4.8 series is over three years old while now the DragonFlyBSD crew has pulled in the Linux 4.8.17 sources of the Intel "i915" DRM driver into their kernel for providing updated graphics driver coverage.

While not attracting as much interest as Linux in the cloud, AI, and other growing markets, the BSDs have seen their share of adoption in many of these areas too as well as the likes of powering some of today's video game consoles. FreeBSD is also well known for powering much of the networking infrastructure of Netflix and other large enterprises. The BSDs advanced a lot from hardware support to new security features and other capabilities this decade setting them on a good trajectory as we get into the 2020s.