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FreeBSD News

FreeBSD is a rapidly developing operating system. Keeping up on the latest developments can be a chore! To keep on top of things, be sure and check this page periodically. Also, you may wish to subscribe to the freebsd-announce mailing list or the RSS feed.

The following projects have their own news pages, which should be checked for project specific updates.

For a detailed description of past, present, and future releases, see the Release Information page.

For FreeBSD security information and a list of available Security Advisories, please refer to the Security Information page.

February 2013

January 2013

  • 23 January: New committer: Achim Leubner (src)

  • 22 January: New committer: Dru Lavigne (doc)

  • 16 January: New committer: Carl Delsey (src)

  • 15 January: Enhanced commit privileges: René Ladan (ports, full doc/www)

  • 14 January: New committer: David Naylor (ports)

  • 13 January: The April-June, 2012 Status Report is now available with 17 entries.

  • 10 January: The development of FreeBSD ports is done in Subversion nowadays. By February 28th 2013, the FreeBSD ports tree will no longer be exported to CVS. Therefore ports tree updates via CVS, CVSup or csup(1) will no longer be available after that date. All users who use CVS, CVSup or csup(1) to update the ports tree are encouraged to switch to portsnap(8) or for users which need more control over their ports collection checkout, use Subversion directly. More information are available in the announcement mail on the FreeBSD ports announce mailing list.

    A migration guide from CVSup or csup(1) to portsnap(8) is also available in the FreeBSD Handbook.

  • 8 January: We are excited to share our next story for our Faces of FreeBSD Series. This is a chance for us to spotlight different people who contribute to FreeBSD and have received funding from us to work on development projects, run conferences, travel to conferences, and advocate for FreeBSD.

    Let us introduce you to Thomas Abthorpe. We helped him attend BSDCan 2009, 2011, and 2012 by helping with his travel expenses. Read his story here.

  • 7 January: New committer: Ian Lepore (src)

December 2012

  • 31 December: FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE is now available. Please be sure to check the Release Notes (detailed version) and Release Errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 9.1. More information about FreeBSD releases can be found on the Release Information page.

  • 24 December: New committer: Kubilay Kocak (ports)

  • 20 December: We are pleased to announce the publication of The FreeBSD Foundation's 2012 End-of-Year Newsletter.

  • 18 December: New committer: Mark Johnston (src)

  • 18 December: The PC-BSD Team announces the availablilty of PC-BSD 9.1.

  • 18 December: New committer: Steven Hartland (src)

  • 17 December: We are excited to share our next story for our Faces of FreeBSD Series. This is a chance for us to spotlight different people who contribute to FreeBSD and have received funding from us to work on development projects, run conferences, travel to conferences, and advocate for FreeBSD.

    Let us introduce you to Dan Langille. We helped him by sponsoring BSDCan since 2006. Read his story here.

  • 12 December: Astute readers of our blog know that The FreeBSD Foundation's annual year-end fundraising drive began last week. Every year over 50% of our donations arrive during this campaign. Read more...

  • 10 December: Are you aware of the tangible benefits derived from our support of the FreeBSD community? In conjunction with our year-end fundraising drive we are going to be spotlighting different people on our website, blog, and Facebook page who have received funding to work on development projects, run conferences, travel to conferences, and advocate for FreeBSD. Read more...

  • 5 December: Your donations have helped make FreeBSD the best OS available! By investing in The FreeBSD Foundation you have helped us keep FreeBSD a high-performance, secure, and stable operating system.

    Thanks to people like you, the FreeBSD Foundation has been proudly supporting the FreeBSD Project and community for 12 years now. Read more...

  • 5 December: The FreeBSD Project has enabled Google Analytics to collect anonymised statistics on web site use. More information can be found in the official announcement.

November 2012

  • 26 November: New committer: Takuya ASADA (src)

  • 25 November: New committer: Barbara Guida (ports)

  • 17 November: On Sunday 11th of November, an intrusion was detected on two machines within the FreeBSD.org cluster. We have found no evidence of any modifications that would put any end user at risk. However, we do urge all users to read the report available at http://www.freebsd.org/news/2012-compromise.html and decide on any required actions themselves.

  • 5 November: New committer: Bryan Venteicher (src)

  • 4 November: New committer: Grzegorz Blach (ports)

  • 3 November: The third RC build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, sparc64, and powerpc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

October 2012

  • 24 October: Enhanced commit privileges: Erwin Lansing (src, ports)

  • 23 October: New committer: Simon J. Gerraty (src)

  • 20 October: Enhanced commit privileges: Eitan Adler (src, ports, doc)

  • 19 October: New member for the Ports Management team: Bernhard Fröhlich.

  • 10 October: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and powerpc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

September 2012

August 2012

  • 23 August: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386 and powerpc64 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

  • 21 August: New committer: Andrey Zonov (src)

  • 1 August: New committer: Bryan Drewery (ports)

July 2012

  • 24 July: The FreeBSD Core Team is glad to announce that Gábor Páli has assumed the role of Core Team Secretary.

  • 16 July: The first BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

  • 11 July: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the completion of the 2012 Core Team election. The FreeBSD Core Team acts as the project's "board of directors" and is responsible for approving new src committers, resolving disputes between developers, appointing sub-committees for specific purposes (security officer, release engineering, port managers, webmaster, etc ...), and making any other administrative or policy decisions as needed. The Core Team has been elected by FreeBSD developers every two years since 2000.

    More information about the election (together with a list of the new members of the Core Team) can be found in the official announcement.

  • 3 July: New committer: Niclas Zeising (doc/www, ports)

June 2012

May 2012

April 2012

March 2012

February 2012

  • 20 February: The first test build for the FreeBSD-8.3 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the amd64, i386, and pc98 architectures are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites.

  • 16 February: New committer: Damjan Marion (src)

  • 16 February: New committer: Ben Gray (src)

  • 14 February: Enhanced commit privileges: Sergey Kandaurov (src, doc)

  • 7 February: New committer: Matthew Seaman (ports)

January 2012

December 2011

  • 16 December: New committer: Jason Helfman (ports)

  • 9 December: The third (and probably last) RC build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems. Alternatively, users upgrading existing systems may now do so using the freebsd-update(8) utility.

  • 8 December: New committer: Pedro Giffuni (src)

  • 2 December: New member for the Ports Management team: Beat Gätzi

November 2011

  • 30 November: New committer: Justin Hibbits (src)

  • 17 November: The second RC build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems. Alternatively, users upgrading existing systems may now do so using the freebsd-update(8) utility.

  • 12 November: New committer: Michael Scheidell (ports)

  • 11 November: New committer: David Chisnall (src)

  • 9 November: New committer: Ruslan Mahmatkhanov (ports)

  • 8 November: The July-September, 2011 Status Report is now available with 28 entries.

October 2011

  • 23 October: The first RC build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems. Alternatively, users upgrading existing systems may now do so using the freebsd-update(8) utility.

  • 6 October: New committer: Alexander V. Chernikov (src)

September 2011

  • 28 September: The third BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems.

  • 27 September: New committer: Jakub Klama (src)

  • 19 September: New committer: Gleb Kurtsou (src)

  • 18 September: New committer: Robert Millan (src)

  • 14 September: New committer: Warren Block (doc/www)

  • 14 September: The April-June, 2011 Status Report is now available with 36 entries.

  • 13 September: New committer: Carlo Strub (ports)

  • 7 September: The second BETA build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems.

August 2011

  • 22 August: New committer: Raphael Kubo da Costa (ports)

  • 17 August: New committer: Eitan Adler (ports)

  • 9 August: The FreeBSD Foundation has published their first Semi-Annual 2011 newsletter which summarizes what they have done to help the FreeBSD Project and community.

  • 1 August: The first test build for the FreeBSD-9.0 release cycle is now available. ISO images for the architectures amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64, and sparc64 are available on most of our FreeBSD mirror sites. One of the many new features in 9.0 we would like to be tested is the new installer, so we encourage our users to do fresh installation on test systems.

July 2011

June 2011

May 2011

April 2011

  • 27 April: The January-March, 2011 Status Report is now available with 34 entries.

March 2011

  • 29 March: New committer: Artem Belevich (src)

  • 27 March: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation In Google's 2011 Summer of Code program, which funds summer students to participate in open source projects. This will be the FreeBSD Project's seventh year in the program, having mentored over 100 successful students through summer-long coding projects between 2005 and 2010.

    Past successful projects have included improvements to Linux ABI emulation, NFSv4 ACLs, TCP regression testing, FUSE file system support, and countless other projects. Many students go on to become FreeBSD developers, as well as participating in FreeBSD developer events around the world through continuing support from the FreeBSD Foundation.

    Prospective participants are invited to apply; more information is available, including proposal and deadline information, on the FreeBSD Summer Projects page.

  • 18 March: New committer: Sofian Brabez (ports)

  • 13 March: New committer: Pawel Pekala (ports)

  • 10 March: The FreeBSD Ports Management Team is pleased to announce Thomas Abthorpe as a full voting member.

  • 5 March: New committer: Steven G. Kargl (src)

February 2011

  • 24 February: FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE is now available. Please be sure to check the Release Notes and Release Errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 8.2. More information about FreeBSD releases can be found on the Release Information page.

  • 24 February: FreeBSD 7.4-RELEASE is now available. Please be sure to check the Release Notes and Release Errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 7.4. More information about FreeBSD releases can be found on the Release Information page.

  • 18 February: Enhanced commit privileges: Martin Wilke (src, ports, doc)

  • 3 February: The third (and probably last) Release Candidate builds for the FreeBSD-7.4/8.2 release cycles are now available. For 8.2-RC3 the amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures are available. For 7.4-RC3 the amd64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures are available. ISO images for these architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Please see the official announcement for further details about these releases.

January 2011

  • 25 January: The October-December, 2010 Status Report is now available with 37 entries.

  • 23 January: The second Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-7.4 release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Please see the official announcement for further details about this release.

  • 16 January: The second Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-8.2 release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Please see the official announcement for further details about this release.

December 2010

  • 27 December: The first Release Candidate builds for the FreeBSD-7.4/8.2 release cycles are now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Please see the official announcement for further details about these releases.

  • 16 December: The FreeBSD Foundation has published their End-of-Year newsletter which summarizes what they have done in 2010 to help the FreeBSD Project and community.

  • 11 December: The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD-7.4/8.2 release cycles is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

  • 7 December: New committer: Florian Smeets (ports)

November 2010

October 2010

September 2010

August 2010

July 2010

  • 27 July: The FreeBSD Foundation has published their Semi-Annual July 2010 newsletter which summarizes what they have done to help the FreeBSD Project and community.

  • 27 July: New committer: Baptiste Daroussin (ports)

  • 23 July: FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE is now available. Please be sure to check the Release Notes and Release Errata before installation for any late-breaking news and/or issues with 8.1. More information about FreeBSD releases can be found on the Release Information page.

  • 22 July: The April-June, 2010 Status Report is now available with 47 entries.

  • 21 July: New committer: Andrew Turner (src)

  • 20 July: PC-BSD 8.1 has been released. PC-BSD is a successful desktop operating system based on FreeBSD that focuses on providing an easy to use desktop system for casual computer users. A list of new features/updates since the last version can be found here.

    The new release can be downloaded or purchased on DVD.

  • 17 July: New committer: Tijl Coosemans (src)

  • 15 July: New committer: Joseph S. Atkinson (ports)

  • 14 July: The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the completion of the 2010 Core Team election. The FreeBSD Core Team acts as the project's "board of directors" and is responsible for approving new src committers, resolving disputes between developers, appointing sub-committees for specific purposes (security officer, release engineering, port managers, webmaster, etc ...), and making any other administrative or policy decisions as needed. The Core Team has been elected by FreeBSD developers every 2 years since 2000.

    More information about the election (together with a list of the new members of the Core Team) can be found in the official announcement.

  • 2 July: The second (and most likely final) Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-8.1 release cycle is now available. CD ISO images for the amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures can be downloaded from most of the FreeBSD mirror sites. Please see the official announcement for further details about this release.

June 2010

May 2010

  • 29 May: The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD-8.1 release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

  • 24 May: The FreeBSD Project again received many high quality applications from students participating in Google's Summer of Code program. This year 18 student proposals to work with the FreeBSD Project were accepted as part of this program. For those with projects that were not accepted this year, we'd like to note that the FreeBSD Project is always willing to help mentor students so they can learn more about operating system development through our normal community mailing lists and development forums.

    Please read the official announcement for more information. The complete list of student projects selected for funding can be found in the FreeBSD Summer of Code wiki. Coding started on May 24, so please join us in welcoming the 18 new students to our community.

  • 19 May: New committer: Jayachandran C. (src)

April 2010

March 2010

February 2010

  • 22 February: PC-BSD 8.0 has been released. PC-BSD is a successful desktop operating system based on FreeBSD that focuses on providing an easy to use desktop system for casual computer users. A list of new features/updates since the last version can be found here.

    The new release can be downloaded or purchased on DVD.

  • 15 February: The first Release Candidate build for the FreeBSD-7.3 release cycle is now available. ISO images for Tier-1 architectures are now available on most of the FreeBSD mirror sites.

  • 12 February: Enhanced commit privileges: Benedict Reuschling (full doc/www)

  • 6 February: New committer: Bernhard Schmidt (src)

  • 2 February: Gábor Kövesdán participated in Google Summer of Code 2008/2009 and for his work he has been given commit access to the source code. His first pieces of work will be bringing in the result of his summer work into the tree.

January 2010

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