BSD Update: OpenBSD Saved, PC-BSD 10.0 is Coming, and FreeBSD 10.0 is Released
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-21 10:19:46 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-21 10:32:23 UTC
Summary: News about the world of BSD, led by a generous donation to OpenBSD and a major new release of FreeBSD
OpenBSD
-
OpenBSD is important because it’s widely used in firewalls, other edge servers, email, DNS and intrusion detection servers for its security. It’s also included in a number of popular third-party packages that include SQL Lite, BIND, Sendmail and the Lynx web browser. €®
-
OpenBSD supports a wide range of hardware architectures, and for practical and logistical reasons there are few places in the world that have them all in one place except OpenBSD headquarters, see eg this picture, which shows a subset of the machines involved in building OpenBSD releases.
PC-BSD
-
PC-BSD 10.0 RC3 for this week pulls in the latest upstream FreeBSD 10 changes. As noted in their weekly digest is also improved detection of AMD Hybrid Graphics systems. With the FreeBSD/PC-BSD open-source graphics drivers being ported from the Linux kernel, their hybrid (dual) GPU graphics support isn't any better than Linux, and these improvements is just better detection if trying to load the X Server off the first GPU fails. Improved NVIDIA Hybrid/Optimus support for PC-BSD/FreeBSD support still needs to be investigated.
FreeBSD
-
FreeBSD 10.0 uses Clang as the default compiler in place of GCC, TRIM support is available for SSDs with ZFS as are other ZFS file-system improvements, AMD Radeon KMS driver support, and a wide-range of packages have been updated. I have already written at length about the best FreeBSD 10 features and other interesting features so check out the dozens of FreeBSD 10.0 articles on Phoronix for more information.
-
The problem has been corrected within FreeBSD HEAD, which is aligned for FreeBSD 11-CURRENT. The problem was fixed by writing a new VT console driver (the "Newcons" project). However, this won't benefit users of FreeBSD 10.0 and can only hope that it will be back-ported to a FreeBSD 10.x point release rather than waiting some years for FreeBSD 11.0.
-
The third and final FreeBSD 10.0 release candidate is out ahead of the hopeful general availability in early January.
FreeBSD 10.0 didn't make it out this year as was originally planned with the first target release date being months ago. Fortunately, the release is progress with a day-after-Christmas update.
-
Advancing prudently but quietly within the Debian camp is the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD operating system that pairs Debian's GNU user-land with the FreeBSD kernel. For Debian 8.0 "Jessie" there are continued improvements on this spin that does away with the Linux kernel. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD Jessie/Sid currently defaults to the FreeBSD 9.2.0 kernel, but a FreeBSD 10.0 development kernel has already landed in Debian and is the focus of today's benchmarks.
-
Latest version of the OS brings in Clang/LLVM, Hyper-V support, ARM additions, and compatibility with the Raspberry Pi
-
What makes this monster server (code-named MEGACORE) interesting isn’t its scale (it’s a fairly common server we build) but rather its purpose. It was recently built by iXsystems for the FreeBSD Foundation, and will be used to test and push FreeBSD to its limits. The FreeBSD Foundation plans on making it available to FreeBSD’s developers and committers for the purposes of addressing SMP, memory, and general performance scalability. It will be the most powerful machine in the Project’s possession to date.
-
Support for secure boot will be available in the FreeBSD 10.1 release which is due to be made later this year, according to Marshall Kirk McKusick, a senior developer of the operating system.
McKusick told iTWire that work on FreeBSD's boot process had been making steady progress. "Implementing UEFI booting is the first step, and last year the (FreeBSD) Foundation sponsored (developer) Benno Rice with a small project to implement a working prototype," he said.
UEFI would be a
bad idea for FreeBSD if FreeBSD
wants to dodge back doors because of
BIOS/EFI-level exploits.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- IBM: We Can't Make 'AI' (Voice Recognition) Do the Work of a McDonald's Teenager, So Let's Try the Same on Saudi Planes
- IBM is lost. It's truly lost.
- The General Public License (GPL) Inspired the Web's Original Openness/Freedom, According to Tim Berners-Lee
- "During the preceding year I had been trying to get CERN to release the intellectual property rights to the Web code under the General Public License (GPL) so that others could use it."
-
- Gemini Links 21/12/2025: Solstice, Chaos of CSS, and Program Interpreter Fun
- Links for the day
- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Represents People, Not Corporations
- FSF isn't in the "business" of appeasing oligarchs
- Why?
- Why write articles?
- Microsoft-Connected Publisher Spinning XBox's Death Spiral (It's Dying Fast) as a Strength and Something Deliberate
- "Microsoft’s big gaming pivot"
- Slop is Rare by Now
- A year ago slop was so abundant that we did a whole series about it, and it was daily
- Links 21/12/2025: U.S. Strikes in Syria, "Epstein Files Photos Disappear From Government Website"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/12/2025: Labrador Retriever of Lagrange's Developer Dies From Cancer, Political Philosophy, and "Getting to Inbox Zero"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft is Becoming Irrelevant: The Case of Georgia
- Not Georgia Tech
- Sirius Open Source is Now Imminently Dead (Struck Off)
- compulsory strike-off
- Dr. Richard Stallman, Invited by LibreTech Collective, is Giving a Public Talk in Georgia Tech Next Month (Scheller College of Business)
- They can probably squeeze about 400 people into this room
- 25 Years of Activism for GNU/Linux
- My passion for GNU/Linux brought a lot of contentment
- Africa, Where Microsoft Used De Facto Slaves to Pretend to be "AI", Chatbots Usage is 0.2% of Measured Online Traffic
- Judging by recent trends in Africa, many "Windows PCs" are being converted into GNU/Linux computers
- New Drone Footage Shows IBM is Dead (Parts of It)
- The people who participated in IBM when IBM actually mattered probably have boasting rights, unlike people who work for IBM today
- Michael Larabel Adds Slop Category to Phoronix, Quickly Realises That It's Worthless
- Phoronix nowadays gets carried away; it made a new category to talk about slop and it decided to call it "intelligence" with some caricature of a brain (that's misleading)Phoronix nowadays gets carried away; it made a new category to talk about slop and it decided to call it "intelligence" with some caricature of a brain (that's misleading)
- After 35 Years the World Wide Web, HTML, and HTTP Are Proprietary
- HTTP/2 added a lot of complexity (it's just a Google protocol, based on SPDY originally), many image formats are proprietary and patented, HTML got 'replaced' by Java-Scripts [sic], and many URLs (the URL system was created in the early 90s) are just long strings for proprietary 'webapps'
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, December 20, 2025
- The Register MS Has Lowered Its Standards Considerably
- Incidentally, we've only just noticed that "US editor for The Register since July 2025" has not been active for 4 weeks already
- Scamfarms, Spamfarms, and Slopfarms in "Linux" Clothing
- Today, Linux searches in Google News produced no slop at all. That's an improvement.
- Did Bill Gates Lobby to Blur the Face of the Young Woman He Openly Braces (and Who Isn't His Wife)?
- "This photo of of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with a woman whose face is blurred out is just one of 68 more photos and documents released today."
- Links 20/12/2025: Microsoft Ruins Televisions, 'Epstein Files' Deeply Sanitised (to Protect Particular Culprits)
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 20/12/2025: Merry Christmas 2025 and Running a Factorio Headless Server on FreeBSD with the Linuxulato
- Links for the day
- With 10 Days Left, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Already Raised Close to $300,000 This Winter
- they're besieged by despicable corporations and very despicable people
- The Real Problem With Rust is Not "Wokeness" (It Never Was)
- Don't feed the trolls who attack "Rust People" on political grounds
- 2025 in Numbers
- What was very good about this year is that we truly got "into the rhythm" of publishing
- More Microsoft Layoffs Coming Soon
- When I spoke about Microsoft layoffs (routinely) I got very viciously attacked by Microsoft boosters
- My Humble Assessment of the Future of Red Hat, A Company That IBM is Flushing Down the Loo
- GNU/Linux will be OK without Red Hat, but shaping the future of it matters because we don't want companies like Valve (DRM) to set the agenda
- Probably the Least Useful Gadgets, Ever
- as if a "smart" thing worn on the wrist is the "new Rolex"
- Former Manager at IBM Research (Yorktown) Says Why IBM is Doomed and the Anonymous Tipline (Speak Up) is a Trap
- IBM isn't willing to change or to address internal issues
- Links 20/12/2025: Fentanylware Becomes CheeTok and "Why Roomba Died"
- Links for the day
- Linux Foundation: Richard Stallman Developed Only a Software Licence
- We already criticised this report several times last night
- Impulsive Writing, Quotas, and Keeping Things as Concise as Feasible
- A 10-word sentence being read by a million people can have the same impact or magnitude (exposure-wise) as a million-word book being read by just 10 people
- Gemini Links 20/12/2025: Christmas Songs, Storms, and Old Web
- Links for the day
- Coming to Grips With a Lack of Future at IBM
- Red Hat's future doesn't look bright under the auspices as they seem right now
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, December 19, 2025
- Links 20/12/2025: Media Layoffs, a Third of Online Traffic is Bots
- Links for the day
