LinuxFest NorthWest is this weekend at Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, WA. There will be a FreeBSD booth which will be handing out PC-BSD DVDs and cool swag. This is a free event, so if you’re in this part of the world, drop by and say hi!

Kris has just announced the availability of the first testing snapshot for the upcoming 9.1 release. This snapshot can be downloaded from here.

NOTE: This snapshot is only available for 64-bit systems. Also, if you need the new GEM/KMS support provided in the previous snapshot, do not install this new snapshot on your main system as that support has been removed, pending its commital to FreeBSD. If you need that support and would like to test the new snapshot, test it in a virtual environment.

The wiki is gradually being updated with the new installer and Warden information and those sections will change over the next few days to match the capabilities of this snapshot.

From the announcement:

The PC-BSD team is pleased to make available the first public 9-STABLE snapshot for 64bit systems!

This snapshot provides both users and developers a means to test out new features in the upcoming PC-BSD 9.1 release. This snapshot may contain buggy code and features, so users are encouraged to run it only on non-critical systems.

Highlights

• FreeBSD 9-STABLE from 4-11-2012
• New system installer! Greatly simplified for desktop and server installs.
• New “PC-BSD Server” installation option. Includes command-line utilities like pbi-manager, warden, metapkgmanager and more.
• Support for ZFS mirror / raidz(1,2,3) during installation.
• Support for SWAP on ZFS, allowing entire disk ZFS installation.
• Support for setting additional ZFS data-set options, such as compression, noexec, etc.
• Warden jail management integrated into system. Allows creating jails via GUI, adding packages and other administration.
• First boot setup wizard allows OEM installs to be easily performed.
• New Bluetooth paring tray / GUI utilities.
• New AppCafe improvements and preferences.
• Improvements to wifi utility.
• Fixed bug causing untranslated strings to show up empty.
• Numerous bug-fixes to PC-BSD related utilities.

Errata

• There is a bug installing to boot-camp partitions which will be fixed in next snapshot.
• The warden rc.d script is not enabled by default. Add ‘warden_enable=”YES”‘ to /etc/rc.conf to enable.
• The i386 image was not built for this snapshot, however it will available in the upcoming weeks.
• The installer will not correctly start on systems with < 512MB of ram, which will be fixed in upcoming snapshots.
• This snapshot does NOT contain the upcoming Intel GEM/KMS video driver support. This will be available in a future snapshot.

Kris Moore will be giving a presentation about PC-BSD at Indiana LinuxFest in Indianapolis, IN on April 14. He will also be giving out PC-BSD DVDs, swag, and answering PC-BSD questions at the BSD booth in the expo area.

If you’re interested in learning more about FreeBSD administration, there will be a full day course entitled FreeBSD for Linux System Administrators on Friday, April 13.

There is no cost to attend either the course or the conference. Pre-registration is encouraged so that you don’t have to wait in line to register when you arrive.

A video that describes how to use PC-BSD 9.0′s Port Jail is now available on YouTube.

The video provides an overview of what a jail is and why you would want to use one, then demonstrates how to initialize the ports jail, how to install the ports tree within the jail, and how to install packages and ports within the Ports Jail.

More information about Ports Jail can be found in that section of the PC-BSD User Guide.

As part of their Developer’s Corner series, iXsystems has posted an interview with lead PC-BSD developer, Kris Moore. The interview hints at some of the exciting features being developed for 9.1.

Speaking of exciting features, we expect the next testing snapshot to be ready in a week or so. This snapshot will include the changes to Warden which will make it easier than ever to manage jails on a PC-BSD system.

From the press release:

DuckDuckGo is a general-purpose search engine that offers real privacy, less spam/clutter and instant answers. Well-known and widely acclaimed for its privacy policy, DuckDuckGo does not store or track user information, ensuring a truly private search experience.

The most recent edition of PC-BSD updates the suggestion list of the search bar with DuckDuckGo to provide users with a discreet, clutter-free search option. Additionally, DuckDuckGo offers many benefits including the ability to use shortcuts to directly search many websites and instant answers that provide topic summaries from a variety of web sources.

PC-BSD users concerned with security can be confident in the knowledge that requests submitted through DuckDuckGo will remain confidential. “We are pleased to make DuckDuckGo available to PC-BSD users, providing a reliable, yet completely anonymous search experience,” says Kris Moore, Director of PC-BSD Software Development at iXsystems.

“We are delighted to partner with PC-BSD,” says Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo’s founder and CEO. “DuckDuckGo and PC-BSD have a shared philosophy on the value of open source and choice.”