FreeBSD is a free, open-source and UNIX-like operating system. Though relatively unknown, it’s a performing and powerful work-horse, capable of coping with massive work-loads whilest remaining fast, ultra-stable and rock-solid. Blogging about FreeBSD and operating systems based on this versatile, safe and secure OS, I want to generate more interest in FreeBSD and its dependants. If you need a reliable, rock-solid and performing system for either your desktop or servers, consider FreeBSD!
Back in 2006 Daily Cup of Tech had a FreeNAS week. If you’re not altogether comfortable getting FreeNAS up and running, why not have a look at FreeNAS Week series of howtos?
Have you seen the “FreeNAS, how it works” video?
FreeNAS Week - day 1: System and Skill Requirements
FreeNAS Week - day 2: Installation HowTo
FreeNAS Week - day 3: Basic Configuration
FreeNAS Week - day 4: Configuring Disks
FreeNAS Week - day 5: Windows Shares
FreeNAS Week - day 6: Setting up FTP access in FreeNAS
FreeNAS is an open source operating system exclusively built to serve the purposes of implementing a small Network Attached Storage (NAS for short) device. NAS devices allow for centralization of data, data backup, and collaboration. The beautiful part, besides it’s being free, is the ease in setting it all up.
At TTU we have begun using a FreeNAS server for organizing all of our files that are commonly used throughout our department. One of the issues that kept coming up within our department was versioning control (people using different versions of the same document). We were also struggling to keep all of our files that we commonly shared in one central location. It was not uncommon for one person to go on vacation and inadvertently lock us out of accessing documents that we all needed access. FreeNAS allows one central location for all of these solutions. FreeNAS’s features really shine in its versatility. With FreeNAS, one can connect to the NAS as a shared network drive, an ftp server, and many other useful methods that meet a wide variety of operating systems needs. With FreeNAS we can insure proper backup either by using a hardware RAID or the built in software RAID.
As one can already see the possibilities for education are pretty varied and wide. It for one can offer life to legacy hardware by turning older machines with lower power processors into centers for data management. A NAS does not need the heavy computing power that many other services need. FreeNAS can also be fun from a usb drive or compact flash drive further reducing its footprint. FreeNAS offers efficiency and access to files from either work, home, or abroad. It offers a method for sharing files that would other wise have to be handed off physically or broken into chunks and sent through email. It also gives schools the opportunity to centralize their documentation and backup. When combined with backup software one can greatly decrease the likelihood of data loss due to hardware failure. It also offers integration with LDAP and local user authentication and restriction control. All in all the software provides another free and easy to configure alternative to expensive projects.
This is a review by rschapman. Bold by me.
The FreeSBIE Team has started a the FreeSBIE wiki which aims to be an open platform mainly used for the documentation and FAQs for the FreeSBIE project.
Are you bored at work and wish you could listen to the hundreds or thousands of mp3’s or ogg’s that you have ripped to your hard drive at home? Maybe you want to create an internet radio station and live out your fantasy of being a DJ.
Whatever your reason, I’m going to show you how to very easily and freely create a kick ass streaming audio site using Linux or *BSD that you can listen to from any computer. I say again, any system - Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever - will be able to listen. Sound cool?
Read Rich Morgan’s howto here
DesktopBSD 1.6 RC 3 is now available for download from our mirrors or via BitTorrent. This release candidate is considered a large step towards a final release 1.6 with major changes such as:
Upgrades from 1.0 and previous release candidates are supported. An additional language CD and 64-bit (AMD64) DVD will be released soon.
After months of hard work, the PC-BSD team is pleased to make available he 1.4 BETA release. This version includes many exciting new features and software, such as:
PC-BSD 1.4 BETA can be downloaded via our mirrors or via Torrent on the the download page.
As this is a beta release, please report any and all bugs to the Bugs database or our testing list:
More information:
[update 13/12/2007: a new version has now been released - check here]
The next major release of FreeBSD, version 7, is one of the most significant so far, with amount of new technologies and improvement largest since introduction of 5.0.
Ivan Voras has now created a FreeBSD 7 LiveCD . This is part of his 2007 Google Summer of Code project, finstall, a graphical FreeBSD installer that’s also a live CD.
The Live CD contains the FreeBSD 7.0 “base” system, a recent kernel, and a basic X11 system with the Xfce 4.2 desktop environment (can be run it as root by starting “startx”). This LiveCD is mostly usable to people that need a “rescue” CD or those which need to experiment with certain aspects of 7.0 like hardware compatibility. It’s not a general-purpose “desktop” LiveCD.
This is all still work-in-progress and Ivan has already reported some problems (panics).
After a long time and hard work the FreeNAS team have released a new beta version (v0.685b) of FreeNAS. It includes many new features and a lot of bugs fixes.
BSDConTR is the first conference on BSD systems in Turkey.
BSDConTR is organized in cooperation with Marmara University and EnderUNIX Software Development team, which is largely known as its ongoing support for BSD systems in Turkey, and its open source projects, the conference will be held on October 20th and 21th in Goztepe campus of Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey.
FreeBSD core team member Robert Watson, from OpenBSD Project Marc Balmer and Diomidis D. Spinellis, author of “Code Reading” book, will be attending the conference as guest speaker.
The conference is organized in full cooperation with Marmara University and EnderUNIX Software Development team, which is largely known as its ongoing support for BSD systems in Turkey, and its open source projects, the conference will be held on October 20th and 21th in Goztepe campus of Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey.
This is een interesting article by Brian Proffitt after iXsystem’s acquisition of PC-BSD. Slightly dated, but still of worth a read.
With all of the BSD variants available for download, it’s easy to incorrectly assume all of them are pure, incompatible forks from each other. Actually, there are more shades of BSD out in the world than just separate forks. One in particular made the news a couple of weeks ago when it was commercially acquired.
The BSD in question is PC-BSD. The company that bought it (for the ubiquitous “undisclosed” terms) is iXsystems, a systems deployment and integrator firm out of San Jose that has pretty strong experience implementing *BSD, Unix and Linux systems for its customer base. So, why, pray tell, did the company up and buy PC-BSD?
The answer may lie in the type of operating system PC-BSD is. Unlike other, incompatible, BSD variants, PC-BSD is completely compatible with its antecedent FreeBSD. It is, for all intents and purposes, a FreeBSD distribution, in much the same way Red Hat or SUSE are Linux distributions. In fact, the similarity runs a bit deeper than that, since PC-BSD has long been designed with business users in mind. Its acquisition only solidifies that commonality.
Currently, PC-BSD is at release 1.2, and is based on FreeBSD 6. Unlike FreeBSD and other BSD variants, which rely on a packages and ports installation solution (similar in many ways to most Unix flavors, including Linux), PC-BSD uses something called PBI - an installation approach that contains everything an application needs to be run. Just click on it and off you go. The advantages for newer users are clear:
PBIs mean no more dependency hell while trying to install the latest and greatest on your server or workstation.
The other key difference between PC-BSD and its FreeBSD parent is the desktop extensions that enable users to run a KDE desktop interface.
In all other respects - and this is key - PC-BSD is compatible with FreeBSD, to the degree that you can go into power-user mode and use FreeBSD’s ports and packages management system on PC-BSD.
What iXsystems likes about the PC-BSD distribution is that it really is a pretty functional Unix environment with an integrated desktop and an installation system that will not confuse the heck out of Windows users coming over to the operating system for the first time. And with such an operating system in their repertoire, it’s pretty clear iXsystems will be able to get PC-BSD-and FreeBSD-deployed into more and more commercial environments.
The plan, according to iXsystems, is to start offering commercial-level support for PC-BSD for their customers, which as we all know removes a big potential hurdle for anyone thinking about migrating away from their current supported system, whether it be Windows, Solaris or Linux. And, remember that key point about compatibility: What’s good for PC-BSD support will no doubt be good for FreeBSD.
The obvious question is, will this plan work? Early indicators say yes, as long as iXsystems doesn’t try to overdo it and try to become the next Red Hat overnight. The PC-BSD development team claims about 100,000 known users, which is a decent-sized user base. FreeBSD’s base is likely significantly larger. If iXsystems develops a focused strategy for commercial markets, there’s no reason it can’t pick up more market share at a steady clip.
Which means Microsoft may just have one more competitor to worry about.
Source: ServerWatch.com - October 25, 2006
My name is Gerard van Essen, and I'm the founder of this site.
Being a happy FreeBSD/PC-BSD and FreeNAS user, it's my aim to spread FreeBSD related news in order to raise public awareness of this great operating sytem ... [more]
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