FreeBSD 10.3: Third Beta Available

Larry the BSD Guy

Now that it’s March, we can look for the first signs of spring. We can also take an early look at FreeBSD 10.3, due to be released later this month, through this beta release.

As far as I’m concerned, the best part of March is Spring Training, and chances are from time to time my undying love for the San Francisco Giants will come out on these hallowed pages.

That personal tidbit aside, another important part of March — especially this month — is that on the road to FreeBSD 11 sometime later this year, FreeBSD 10.3 is well along the way, with the third beta already available, according to a very detailed post by Marius Strobl on the FreeBSD Stable mailing list.

To summarize, installations for FreeBSD 10.3 Beta3 are now available for amd64, i386, ia64, PowerPC, Sparc and a variety of ARM processors. Checksums, too numerous to list here, can be found in Strobl’s original post, linked in the paragraph above.

While Strobl also goes into detail about the changes from the previous version, some of the more important changes grasped by the mere mortals known as the average user (raising hand here) are a wide variety of corrections fixed on this version, as well as updated network drivers, improvements to the filemon device and improvements to Hyper-V. Strobl also mentions that the release notes page for 10.3 is not yet complete, and “will be updated on an ongoing basis as the 10.3-RELEASE cycle progresses.”

Strobl also outlines upgrading instructions in his post as well. However, being a card-carrying coward when it comes to updating a system on which I am still a neophyte, I’m personally going to pass. However, for the more adventurous of you, you can upgrade per the instructions (if you need them), bearing in mind several caveats mentioned.

Instructions are also available on the post for using FreeBSD 10.3 on a virtual machine.

According to the schedule for 10.3, set for a release announcement on March 29, it appears that the FreeBSD team has everything firing on all cylinders, so to speak, on the way to getting this release out. And that’s good news, no matter how you look at it.

See you next week.

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Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero