Digital Dharma writes "Excellent! FreeBSD 4.9 has been released, and if it's anything like the RC series, this will be a release to remember. You can obtain it from the usual sources, or if you're feeling generous and supportive, you can buy the cd set. Support your local Daemon!" As Jani Laaksonen writes, the new release includes "numerous security advisory fixes, kernel changes and support for the Physical Address Extensions (PAE) capability on Intel Pentium Pro and higher processors (see page(4)). This release also adds support for a few more hardware NIC cards, ipfw network protocol enhancements, userland changes, and more. Check FreeBSD 4.9 Release Notes for more information."

Trollaxor writes "The source code to Darwin 7.0, corresponding to the lower levels of Panther, is free for download less than 24 hours after the new Mac OS X v10.3 release! Check out the Darwin FAQ and the Darwin Q & A to get acquainted with this Open Source BSD operating system."

Dan writes "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...in the early part of 1993...the last 3 coordinators of the 'Unofficial 386BSD Patchkit' would go on to start the FreeBSD project that has grown to be used by millions of websites and installations around the world. Murray Stokely is talking about Jordan Hubbard, Nate Williams, and Rod Grimes. Looking for a catchy name, David Greenman suggested FreeBSD and it stuck. With the help of Walnut Creek CDROM, the first CDROM distribution, FreeBSD 1.0, was released in December of 1993."

Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Murray Stokely has announced the availability of RC4 - the final Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.9. He says that RC4 includes SATA, DRM and other bugfixes; he is requesting everyone for help with testing. He says that if all goes well, they will be able to release Monday."

jschauma writes "The NetBSD Project has created a new mailing list, tech-cluster. As the name suggests, this list is intended for technical discussions on building and using clusters of NetBSD hosts. Initially, this list is expected to be of low volume, but we hope to advocate and advance the use of NetBSD in such environments significantly. Subscription is via majordomo -- please see this page for details."

Jessie writes "OpenBSD just gained high availability functionality in the form of a new protocol named CARP, the Common Address Redundancy Protocol. This feature was a long time in the coming due to Cisco's patent on VRRP, requiring the development of something completely new and more secure. This article on KernelTrap offers details on OpenBSD's impressive new protocol, from how it works to how it got its name."

ValourX writes "Here's a full review of FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE complete with screen shots, a short comparison with GNU/Linux, and some notes on migrating to FreeBSD from Windows and GNU/Linux."

Sit back, read Slashback. Tonight, (another) revision to the "Hidden Agenda" collegiate games contest, torrent files for the new Mandrake release, and the by turns heated-and-cool responses to Forbes' unfriendly description of the FSF -- for attempting to protect their copyrights -- as Linux's "hit men." Read on below for the details.

Dan writes "NetBSD's Alistair Crooks, on behalf of the Board of Directors, The NetBSD Foundation, announces the appointment of a new NetBSD core team. He says that after a long period of discussion and debate, they have decided to keep the core team at the same size as the original (5 members), with what they believe is a good balance of knowledge, skill, inspiration and enthusiasm."

skelley writes "As seen on deadly.org, OpenBSD 3.4 CDs have begin to ship. If you ordered one already, you should see a charge appear on your credit card (if that's how you paid) and you should expect to see your CD in the next few days to week (depending on where you are). The CDs are being shipped from Calgary. This is earlier than expected, but hey ... enjoy it!"

martin-k writes "There is commercial software built for FreeBSD after all... SoftMaker, a German vendor of office apps, just ported the TextMaker word processor to FreeBSD, making this the fifth platform it runs on (after Windows, Pocket PC, Handheld PC, and Linux). Blazingly fast, reads and writes Microsoft Word files seamlessly, and offers everything you expect from a modern word processor. Also coming to your desktop: the PlanMaker spreadsheet and DataMaker database package."

uninet writes "Most people know what GNU/Linux is, but fewer know about BSD and fewer still have actually used one of the major BSD variants (other than the highly customized Mac OS X). Ed Hurst, a writer and a long time GNU/Linux user, decided to give FreeBSD a try. Will Ed join the ranks of happy FreeBSD users? Find out at OfB.biz." And our own Roblimo, Windows-free for five years, has spent a week learning Windows XP.

BSD Forums writes "Kernel programming sometimes feels like a dark art where application programmers should never venture, but sometimes it's the right way to solve a problem. (Oh, and it's also very interesting.) One of the easiest places to start is by adding a new system call to a kernel. Kevin Lo explains how and why, with the OpenBSD kernel in this OnLamp article."

Dan writes "The NetBSD security team has formally announced 4 security advisories and fixes for the following advisories: NetBSD-SA2003-014 Insufficient argument checking in sysctl(2); NetBSD-SA2003-015 Remote and local vulnerabilities in XFree86 font libraries; NetBSD-SA2003-016 Sendmail - another prescan() bug CAN-2003-0694; NetBSD-SA2003-017 OpenSSL multiple vulnerability. There is an integer overflow in the XFree86 font libraries, which could lead to potential privilege escalation and/or remote code execution. Sendmail advisory involves a prescan() bug in sendmail packages prior to 8.12.10. OpenSSL had multiple vulnerabilities, they were found by tests performed by NISCC. Finally, insufficient argument checking in sysctl(2) which could be exploited."

edhall cut-and-pastes "After a six-month hiatus, a new FreeBSD Status Report has just been issued, along with a promise to resume its bi-monthly publication. As the report itself makes obvious, a lot has happened over the last six months. Progress has been happening along many fronts; those groups making reports include: [snip] These are, of course, just the projects that remembered to send in a report -- there are many more ongoing efforts than listed here; see this page for a fuller but not necessarily complete list (you'll note that there are status reports for projects not listed there, such as the AMD64 port)."