This year, the Southern California Linux Expo is presenting SCALE: The Next Generation. This event is designed to introduce youth to open source and to invite children to attend and participate in an open source conference.
In addition to the usual cool booth swag, we created a kid’s colouring and activity pamphlet designed for the younger set. This is available as a PDF download. Feel free to print out as many as you like and to distribute to your children and their friends, elementary school, etc. If you have any success stories with the pamphlet or have suggestions for the next version, let us know!
For those of you who use Google+, there is now an official PC-BSD page.
Here are the locations for the PC-BSD 9.0 torrents:
You can assist the PC-BSD community by helping to seed the torrents. If you are new to seeding, check out the FAQ.
The PC-BSD development team and iXsystems are pleased to announce the immediate availability of PC-BSD version 9.0!
Based upon FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE, this is the first release of PC-BSD which offers users a variety of desktop environments to choose from, such as KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE and more! Also available are pre-built VirtualBox and VMware images with integrated guest tools for rapid virtual system deployment, and native support for installing directly to OS X BootCamp partitions.
A very special thank you goes out to our contributors, testers, documentation team, and translators. Your help was invaluable in getting 9.0 ready for launch!
Some 9.0 highlights:
- Based upon FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE.
- Support for installing a variety of Window Managers, such as KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE and more!
- Improved PBI system, allows library sharing, binary diff updating, custom repositories, digital signing and more!
- Support for “freebsd-update” via the System Update GUI.
- New Control Panel, providing consistent configuration options across various Window Managers.
- Improved networking utilities, including wifi quick-connect.
- Enhanced “Life-Preserver” utility for doing off-site rsync backups of user data.
- New VirtualBox / VMware disk images, with integrated guest tools.
- Support for UFS+Journaling out of box.
- New graphical boot options page.
- Support for installation to BootCamp partitions on OS X systems.
- And much more!
You can download PC-BSD 9.0 here. Instructions for preparing a system for intallation and performing the installation can be found in the PC-BSD 9.0 Users Handbook. An update for upgrading to 9.0-RELEASE from an RC version of PC-BSD 9.0 will be available in Update Manager in the next day or so.
Physical media can be purchased from the FreeBSD Mall. A DVD and book bundle will also be available from the Mall by the end of January.
Additional links:
Kris Moore will be giving a presentation Introduction to PC-BSD 9 next Saturday during SCALE, to be held at the Hilton LAX in Los Angeles, CA.
He will also be available at the PC-BSD booth in the expo area. Drop by to say hi and to pickup a DVD of PC-BSD 9.0 and some cool swag.
Registration for SCALE is very reasonable: $10 for the expo-only or $70 for the expo and presentations.
The PC-BSD 9.0 Users Handbook is complete and available in several formats:
- as an icon on the 9.0-RELEASE desktop (which should be announced as available in the next day or so)
- in HTML, PDF, and epub formats from the handbook page of the ftp server
- as a Kindle version which should be available from Amazon some time this week
- FreeBSD Mall will be selling a “dead tree” version; more details on pricing and ordering should be available on their website in a few days
Let me know if you are interested in translating this version of the Handbook so I can send you the source and make sure that the translations mailing list is aware of the pending translation.
Posted in 9.0, handbook
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We’re pleased to announce that Jesse Smith is the winner of the Haiku contest with the following entry:
fast, secure, friendly,
a daemon in the machine.
behold: isotope!
The haiku is also availlable as a graphic:
ISC hosts portions of the PC-BSD infrastructure. Due to increased growth in the number of users using PC-BSD, the old infrastructure at ISC has been completely replaced. This should result in faster download times and updates for PC-BSD users.
For those of you interested in the technical details, the frontend box is a 6 core Xeon 5647 running at 2.93ghz, with an additional open CPU socket. This box has 48GB of RAM, and is running FreeBSD 9.0-RC3 on a pair of 1TB SATA disks in a ZFS mirror. This box provides trac/svn/rsync/ftp services to the outside world, and also runs an internal PostgresQL server for trac.
The backend box is a TrueNAS storage server connected via redundant point to point 10gigE to the front end box. NFS exports a RAIDZ of 4 2TB SATA drives with SSD L2ARC. This box a has a single quad core Westmere, with an empty CPU socket in case expansion is needed, running at 2.4ghz and 48GB of RAM.
Both machines have redundant hot swap power, hot swap drives, as well as LOM (lights out management) provided via dedicated IPMI.
The old hardware is being donated to ISC.
Show us your creativity/humor/love for FreeBSD and PC-BSD by submitting an original haiku poem. Here at iXsystems we always love hearing what you have to say, and what better way to celebrate the upcoming PC-BSD 9.0 release than indulging in some creative writing? We’ll gladly give away a PC-BSD shirt to the winner, and immortalize his/her haiku up on our Facebook and Google+ sites.
Rules:
- Entry must be in haiku form (5,7,5 syllables) and written in comprehensible English in order to be considered.
- Multiple entries are welcome, but only one entry per person can win. A single good entry will stand out more than numerous similar ones.
- Entry should be FreeBSD or PC-BSD related in order to be considered.
- By submitting an entry, you agree to let iXsystems reproduce your work for promotional purposes and that it is your own original work.
Prize: A PC-BSD Isotope T-shirt plus misc FreeBSD swag items. (Total ARV: $30)
Contest starts: Dec 19th, 12:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time
Contest ends: Dec 30th, 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time
The Kindle version of the PC-BSD 8.2 Handbook (and the upcoming Kindle version of the 9.0 Handbook) are participating in the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. This program allows Kindle owners to borrow the book for free.
