The July issue of BSD Magazine has an article introducing the PC-BSD 9.0 Control Panel on pages 12-15. It also provides instructions for building the Control Panel on FreeBSD or PC-BSD 8.2. The ability to add the administrative tools of any window manager regardless of the window manager you are currently logged into is pretty slick. You can also read just this article on slideshare.

Kris has just announced that the next testing snapshot is available. Some of the changes will be of interest to MythTV and multiple window manager users:

The next snapshot for PC-BSD 9-CURRENT is now available for download.

Snapshot instructions and general information on providing testing feedback are available here.

This snapshot includes the following changes:

• Update to Control-panel allows it to detect the current window manager and display the configuration tools provided by that desktop environment. Included is a CLI de-info script to get current desktop as well as a list of all installed desktop environments. Thanks to Yuri Momotiuk for this cool feature.
• Added several new MythTV plugins and related ports as well as an icon for MythTV initial setup. We’re looking for MythTV users to test these changes and help with documenting MythTV usage in the Handbook.
• Fixed some typos in pbi-manager man pages.
• Corrected some incorrect wallpaper re-sizing on the installer.
• Updated nvidia driver to 270.41.06 which adds support for several GPUs.
• Fixed nvidia driver not loading kernel module at boot.
• Allow user mounting of mmcsd(4) MMC and SD memory cards.
• Added uhidd (USB human interface devices) to the base-system.
• Fixes to the network manager for setting up IPv6 gateway / DNS.
• Fixed bugs in the System Manager checking out ports / system source.
• Added patch for pc-sysinstall which improves wiping backup GPT partition tables.
• Fixed issue with optional components, source / ports not being installed from DVD
• Updated the default beastie.4th boot-splash menu to boot quicker, and more easily halt the countdown

Kris’ formal paper on the new PBI 9 format is available as a PDF download. In it he describes the historical reasons for the legacy format as well as the design behind the new format. He also provides a brief overview of the new suite of PBI command line tools.

Google has announced their mentoring organizations for GSoC 2011. Unfortunately we didn’t make the cut this year, though 417 organizations were vying for 175 slots. Maybe next year

If you are a student and are interested in a BSD summer of code project, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and DragonFly BSD are participating in GSoC 2011. Click each link to see that Project’s ideas page.

You’re still welcome to visit our ideas page and to contribute.

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.2 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE, and KDE 4.5.5

Version 8.2 contains a number of enhancements and improvements. Some of the notable changes are:

• FreeBSD 8.2-Release
• KDE 4.5.5
• Added ability to select file-system type and encryption during auto-partitioning
• Able to toggle between MBR/GPT partitioning
• Various bug fixes to the wireless / network managers

Version 8.2 of PC-BSD is available for download from the website as well as via torrent.

Looks like FreeBSD / PC-BSD will be getting support for GEM/KMS in the near future!

The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that Konstantin 
Belousov has been awarded a grant to implement support of GEM,
KMS, and DRI for Intel Drivers. This project is being 
co-sponsored by iXsystems.

The project is to implement GEM, port KMS, and write new 
DRI drivers for Intel Graphics, including the latest 
Sandy Bridge generation of integrated graphic units. 
The work should allow the latest Intel open-source driver 
to run on FreeBSD, expanding the range of hardware where 
FreeBSD is suitable for the desktop.

For more details, take a look at the announcement e-mail:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2011-February/001361.html