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Posts tagged as “BSD”

UbuntuBSD Should Heed Kubuntu’s Cautionary Tale

By Larry Cafiero on April 14, 2016 |

Operating Systems and Software

UbuntuBSD Should Heed Kubuntu’s Cautionary Tale

Larry the BSD Guy

Should UbuntuBSD be officially tied to the Canonical family of operating systems?

Our good friends at Softpedia reported last week that the fledgling UbuntuBSD variant could be seeking the imprimatur from Canonical and become an official Ubuntu “flavor.”

Jon Boden, the lead developer of UbuntuBSD, submitted a post on the Ubuntu developers’ discussion list to let them know that he would “like to contribute all my work to Ubuntu Community and, if you think it is worthy, make ubuntuBSD an official Ubuntu project like Xubuntu or Edubuntu.”

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OSVDB Shuts Down, Firefox Add-ons Unsafe & More…OSVDB icon

OSVDB Shuts Down, Firefox Add-ons Unsafe & More…

By Christine Hall on April 8, 2016 |

Community, Distros, News, Operating Systems, Security and Software

FOSS Week in Review

Bubbling beneath the headlines in this week’s FOSS news review: ownCloud gets a new release, the Linux kernel grows by a half million lines since January 1, a new OS for the Pi 3 and FOSS Force welcomes a new columnist.

It seems as if even some FOSS writers have been buying into “Microsoft luvs Linux” this week, as some have been been bending over backwards to applaud the Ubuntu connection with bash on Windows. I only have one thing to say about that: Windows with bash support is still Windows.

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In the real FOSS news this week…

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

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Busy Week: UbuntuBSD, FreeNAS 9.10 ReleasedFreeNAS Logo

Busy Week: UbuntuBSD, FreeNAS 9.10 Released

By Larry Cafiero on March 24, 2016 |

News, Operating Systems and Software

Larry the BSD Guy

While the entire BSD world has been buzzing over Ubuntu’s BSD release, the FreeNAS project has been busy releasing version 9.10 as a major precursor to version 10.

Most of the attention this week has been around the release of UbuntuBSD, which in and of itself is a noble effort for those who want to escape from systemd, as the developers have dubbed it according to Phoronix. This manifestation joins Ubuntu 15.10 Wile E. Coyote — sorry, Wily Werewolf — to the Free BSD 10.1 kernel.

To its credit, UbuntuBSD uses Xfce as its default desktop. It also joins a list of other marriages between Linux distros and the BSD kernel: Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, ArchBSD (now PacBSD), Gentoo/BSD and others along the FOSS highway. It’s worth a look and we’ll be giving it a test drive sometime soon.

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But for now, there’s a more interesting and significant development in the BSD realm rising on the horizon.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingBusy Week: UbuntuBSD, FreeNAS 9.10 Released
FreeBSD Foundation Logo, Website Get New LookFreeBSD logo

FreeBSD Foundation Logo, Website Get New Look

By Larry Cafiero on March 17, 2016 |

Community, News and Operating Systems

Larry the BSD Guy

Sometimes you have to quit cleaning your code long enough to clean your room. The people at the FreeBSD Foundation have already been doing some spring cleaning. They’ve even called the decorator.

Drumroll, maestro…

There’s a new look at the FreeBSD Foundation, with a new logo and website. The changes are intended to highlight “the ongoing evolution of the Foundation identity and ability to better serve the FreeBSD Project,” according to the post announcing the changes.

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FreeBSD Foundation logo
The new FreeBSD Foundation logo marks a new step forward for the foundation.
Logo used with permission from the FreeBSD Foundation.
“Our new logo was designed to not only reflect the established and professional nature of our organization, but also to represent the link between the Project and the Foundation, and our commitment to community, collaboration, and the advancement of FreeBSD,” the announcement continues.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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OpenBSD 5.9 Set for May 1 Release; Pre-orders AvailableopenBSD logo

OpenBSD 5.9 Set for May 1 Release; Pre-orders Available

By Larry Cafiero on March 10, 2016 |

News and Operating Systems

Larry the BSD Guy

The upcoming release of OpenBSD’s latest and greatest comes with plenty of upgrades and improvements — plus the sound of music….

First things first: My German isn’t great. In fact, it would be completely nonexistent except for the fact that it interests me that in the German version of Scrabble you could essentially get 238 points with one word without using a double-word score.

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openbsd logoHowever, the German online publication Pro-Linux.de this week reported (in German, but Google Translate works wonders) that pre-orders are ready to be taken for OpenBSD 5.9, scheduled for a May 1 release.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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FreeBSD 10.3: Third Beta AvailableFreeBSD logo

FreeBSD 10.3: Third Beta Available

By Larry Cafiero on March 3, 2016 |

Operating Systems

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.

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BSD logoThat 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.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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Speaking on BSD: The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Speaking on BSD: The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

By Larry Cafiero on February 25, 2016 |

Community, Humor and Operating Systems

Larry the BSD Guy

The BSD devil resides in a penguin’s DNA.

After answering various calls for presentations to a few upcoming shows, it stands to reason that Tom Petty is right: The waiting is the hardest part.

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Because I now use PC-BSD on a daily basis, the idea going forward is to pitch talks about the conversion from one side of the Free/Open Source Software street to the other; the uplifting situations and occasional hurdle such a conversion brings, and to outline the similarities (lots) and differences (few, but relatively significant) between Linux distros and BSD variants.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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FreeBSD, Variants Not Affected by Recent GNU BugBSD logo

FreeBSD, Variants Not Affected by Recent GNU Bug

By Larry Cafiero on February 18, 2016 |

News, Operating Systems and Security

Larry the BSD Guy

The glibc security vulnerability that Linux developers have been scrambling to patch does not affect *BSD.

Much has been made about a vulnerability in a function in the GNU C Library. And searching far and wide over the Internet, there was little — actually nothing — I could find regarding how this affected BSD variants.

However, you can rest easy, BSDers: Not our circus, not our monkeys.

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Dag-Erling Smørgrav, a FreeBSD developer since 1998 and a former FreeBSD Security Officer, writes in his blog that “neither FreeBSD itself nor native FreeBSD applications are affected.”

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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Lumina Desktop Getting Ready for FreeBSD 11.0Lumina Desktop screenshot

Lumina Desktop Getting Ready for FreeBSD 11.0

By Larry Cafiero on February 11, 2016 |

Desktops and News

Larry the BSD Guy

The BSD licensed Lumina Desktop aims to release version 1.0 in July.

It appears the sun is rising on Lumina.

Ken Moore, the lead developer for the BSD-based Lumina Desktop Environment, announced that another step towards the release of a full-fledged desktop environment for BSD variants (and Linux distros, for that matter) has been achieved with the release of version 0.8.8 yesterday.

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For those of you keeping score at home, the Lumina Desktop Environment — let’s just call it Lumina for short — is a lightweight, XDG-compliant, BSD-licensed desktop environment focusing on getting work done while minimizing system overhead. Specifically designed for PC-BSD and FreeBSD, it has also been ported to many other BSD variants and Linux distros. Lumina is based on the Qt graphical toolkit and the Fluxbox window manager, and uses a small number of X utilities for various tasks.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingLumina Desktop Getting Ready for FreeBSD 11.0