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iXsystems Announces TrueOS Launch

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iXsystems Inc. has announced the launch of TrueOS, a desktop FreeBSD based operating system that evolved from the PC-BSD name. Notable features are its rolling release updates, Lumina Desktop Environment, and more features such as TrueOS Pico coming soon. Head on over to TrueOS.org to download the latest release.

trueos

Features include rolling release distribution, ZFS boot environments, and SysAdm administration suite for a reliable desktop experience

SAN JOSE, CA–(Marketwired – November 10, 2016) – iXsystems announced today the launch of TrueOS®, the next evolution of PC-BSD. TrueOS is a modern, cutting-edge distribution of FreeBSD, combining the convenience and features of a rolling release distribution with the failsafe technology of ZFS boot environments.

TrueOS tracks the FreeBSD “Current” branch and merges features from select developer branches to improve support for newer hardware and technologies. Weekly automatic updates keep the user’s system up-to-date, and all updates are performed safely within system snapshots known as boot environments.

Original announcement: https://www.ixsystems.com/blog/ixsystems-announces-trueos-launch/

Related link: DistroWatch – TrueOS Review by Jesse Smith

pfSense 2.3.2-p1 RELEASE Now Available

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The developers of pfSense made available version 2.3.2-p1 RELEASE. Notable changes are updates to PHP, libidn, curl, libxml2, OpenSSL vulnerability fixes, HyperV, and many more. See the full release notes in the link below, and download the ISO/image files here.

pfSense
We are happy to announce the release of pfSense® software version 2.3.2-p1!

This is a maintenance release in the 2.3.x series, bringing a number of bug fixes. The full list of changes is on the 2.3.2-p1 New Features and Changes page.

This release includes fixes for 34 bugs and 2 feature items completed.

If you haven’t yet caught up on the changes in 2.3.x, check out the Features and Highlights video. Past blog posts have covered some of the changes, such as the performance improvements from tryforward, and the webGUI update.

Read the full release notes: https://blog.pfsense.org/?p=2122

Related links:

pfSense docs – 2.3.2-p1 New Features and Changes

Softpedia – First pfSense 2.3.2 Update Adds OpenSSL Security Fixes to the BSD-Based Firewall

FreeBSD 11.0 vs Ubuntu 16.04 vs. macOS Sierra Benchmarks by Michael Larabel

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Michael Larabel of Phoronix performed several benchmark tests between the latest FreeBSD (note that it is not the official 11.0-RELEASE), Ubuntu, and macOS Sierra operating systems on the MacBook Air. The tests performed range from SQLite, OpenMP, to the LLVM Clang compiler. See the link below for the detailed results.

freebsdairYesterday I published some macOS 10.2 vs. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS benchmarks from a Mac Mini and MacBook Air systems. For those curious if BSDs can outperform macOS Sierra on Apple hardware, I tested the MacBook Air with FreeBSD 11.0 compared to the Linux and macOS results on that Core i5 system. Here are those results.

FreeBSD 11.0 AMD64 was tested on the Haswell-based MacBook Air and it actually worked well. Even the HD Graphics 5000 were playing nicely with the FreeBSD DRM Intel driver. The MacBook Air is equipped with a Core i5 4250U CPU with HD Graphics 5000, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a 120GB Apple SSD. The install was smooth and was off to the races with testing.

Read about the benchmark results: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?item=freebsd-ubuntu-sierra&num=1&page=article

Related links:

Phoronix discussion – FreeBSD 11.0 Comes Up Short In Ubuntu 16.04 vs. macOS Sierra Benchmarks

Phoronix September 2016 Recap – Vim 8.0, macOS Sierra, Libreboot, & GCC Were Popular In September

Phoronix – FreeBSD 11 Is Still Being Respun & Tested, Hope To Release Next Week

ELI5 – What are the differences between LINUX and BSD? from linux4noobs

What are the advantages of BSD as a PC OS? from freebsd

Michael Larabel tries out TrueOS, and other BSDs

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Check out these articles from Michael Larabel, of Phoronix, giving his input on TrueOS, DragonFlyBSD, GhostBSD, and various BSD operating systems. He provides thoughts on the ease of use, what needs work, and his top choices.

power

While I’ve been running PC-BSD on some systems for years I hadn’t tried out any of its rolling-release FreeBSD 11.0-based spins under the new TrueOS brand nor had I tried out the project’s Qt-based Lumina Desktop Environment since it reached 1.0. That changed today with trying out the latest weekly spin of TrueOS x64.

TrueOS is PC-BSD’s new unified brand and in addition to the changeover happening for the FreeBSD 11.0 milestone, some other changes TrueOS is carrying on top of FreeBSD 11 includes using LibreSSL, making use of Linux 4.7 DRM driver support, and more.

TrueOS First Spin

Discussion

pacbsd

Following the seven-way Linux distribution benchmark comparison published earlier this week, on the same system I set out to test a variety of BSD distributions on the same system and ultimately benchmark their out-of-the-box performance too. Those performance benchmark results will be published later this week while today were a few remarks I wanted to share when trying out TrueOS, DragonFlyBSD, GhostBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, MidnightBSD, and PacBSD (Arch BSD) on this modern Intel Xeon system.

Trying 8 BSDs

Discussion

Related links:

Phoronix – FreeBSD Now Has A Port For CentOS 7 Binary Support

FreeBSD vs TrueOS from freebsd

 

PC-BSD Evolves into TrueOS

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As announced earlier this week, PC-BSD has changed its name to TrueOS. The developers made another announcement indicating that TrueOS is a rolling release based on FreeBSD-CURRENT. Download the new ISO/image here.

trueoslogo

TrueOS combines the convenience of a rolling release distribution with the failsafe technology of boot environments, resulting in a system that is both current and reliable. TrueOS now tracks FreeBSD’s “Current” branch and merges features from select FreeBSD developer branches to enhance support for newer hardware and technologies. Weekly automatic updates keep your system always up-to-date, and all updates are performed safely within system snapshots called boot environments. The TrueOS desktop uses the modular yet feature-rich Lumina desktop environment alongside the new SysAdm administration suite to provide a reliable desktop experience.  SysAdm provides local and remote management of TrueOS and FreeBSD systems using a cross-platform graphical client compatible with Windows, Mac, and many Linux distributions. TrueOS is preconfigured for desktop and server installations using an intuitive graphical installer, taking the guesswork out of setting up a new system.

Where to find TrueOS:

Original announcement:

PC-BSD Evolves into TrueOS

Related links:

Softpedia – PC-BSD Operating System Gets Renamed to TrueOS, Follows a Rolling Release Model

Phoronix – PC-BSD-Renamed TrueOS To Use LibreSSL, Linux DRM 4.7 Compatibility

Hacker News Discussion – PC-BSD Evolves into TrueOS

/r/TrueOS

GhostBSD 10.3 Enoch is now available

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The developers of GhostBSD have made available the final RELEASE of 10.3, dubbed “Enoch”. The most notable changes in this version are ZFS support, better VirtualBox support, and many network fixes. See the link below for the full release notes and download the ISO/image here.

ghostbsd

After a year of development, testing and debugging we are pleased to announce the release of GhostBSD 10.3 MATE & XFCE which is available on SourceForge and torrents for the amd64 and i386 architectures.

What’s new in GhostBSD 10.3

  • ZFS support
  • UEFI support
  • Installer custom partition creation subjection
  • VirtualBox support get setup at boot time if needed.
  • 4k partition alignment by default
  • GhostBSD Software will be updated Quarterly which will bring more stability to GhostBSD still user will be able to change it to latest to have the latest software update.

What changed in GhostBSD 10.3

  • The installer partition editor UI and partitioning have been improved
  • VirtualBox additions would be uninstall after installer if it is not runnig in a VirtualBox
  • Slim is replacing GDM.
  • Networkmgr display the full SSID
  • Replaced the HTML/CSS installation slide with a GTK/CSS the slide.

Official announcement: http://ghostbsd.org/10.3_enoch

Related links:

Softpedia – GhostBSD 10.3 “Enoch” Officially Released with ZFS and UEFI Support, More

DistroWatch – BSD Release: GhostBSD 10.3

FreeNAS 10-BETA is now available

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The long awaited FreeNAS 10-BETA is now available for download. This new version features a drastically improved graphic user interface, middleware, UI for virtual machine hosting, Docker, ReST API, and a plethora of other features. Please note that the BETA should not be used in production and for testing purposes only. See the link below for the full release notes and download the ISO/image here.

freenas10beta

FreeNAS 10-BETA

The FreeNAS Development Team is very proud to announce this general-availability BETA release of its totally redesigned, ground-up rewrite of FreeNAS, a release containing dozens of new features, additional polish, and hundreds of bug fixes to the previously released ALPHA2 of FreeNAS 10.

While still not considered “production ready” by any means, we hope that the new features, redesigned middleware, advanced CLI interface, and radically improved User Experience of FreeNAS 10 overall will attract users who are interested in a preview of what is to come with FreeNAS 10 RELEASE.

We also hope that software developers who are keen to understand the internals of this new design, and the ways in which it is facilitating the evolution of entirely new class of features and capabilities, will join us in making their own contributions to what has become the world’s most popular open source storage operating system!

Official announcement: http://www.freenas.org/blog/freenas-10-beta-now-available/

Related links:

FreeNAS Forums – FreeNAS 10-BETA is Now Available!

Softpedia – FreeNAS 10 Beta Open-Source Storage Solution Ships with over 800 Resolved Issues

iXsystems’ FreeNAS 10 Beta Available Now

FreeNAS 10 Beta Released from freenas

PC-BSD is now TrueOS

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The developers of PC-BSD have decided to change the prominent FreeBSD based desktop operating system’s name to TrueOS. The decision was made by lead developer Kris Moore, who founded the project back in 2006. TrueOS will continue to be bundled with Lumina, a lightweight desktop environment designed by Ken Moore.

trueos_desktopedit-e1471621816705

What Happened to PC-BSD®?

Many are very familiar with the name PC-BSD® and may be wondering why we changed the name. Although it’s a household name for so many, the developers realized this was a time for a new name that would better convey our message. Lead developer Kris Moore had this to say: “We’ve already been using TrueOS® for the server side of PC-BSD®, and it made sense to unify the names. PC-BSD® doesn’t reflect server or embedded well. TrueOS® Desktop/Server/Embedded can be real products, avoids some of the alphabet soup, and gives us a more catchy name.” One important lesson learned from going to conferences is that people can have a hard time remembering the acronym that makes up our name, which is not a good place to start with marketing a product. We’re confident the TrueOS® name will allow people to quickly identify the project. Subsequently, we will be able to convey our brand message in a better and more unified way.

Related links:

Phoronix – More Details On PC-BSD’s Rebranding As TrueOS

Ostatic – PC-BSD > TrueOS, BSD’s Legacy, f25 Wayland Maybe

FreeBSD Foundation – Installing PC-BSD as a Primary Operating System