David O'Brien writes " FreeBSD SMP on Alpha processors is now stable and has been checked into CVS repository on the development branch (5.0-CURRENT). John Baldwin, Andrew Gallatin, and Doug Rabson first booted single-user SMP on Friday, April 13th, and full multi-user support followed on Tuesday, April 17th. The code was stablized and then checked into the CVS repository on Friday, April 27th. Since being checking into the repository, it has been verified to work on quad-CPU DEC AlphaServer 4100s, dual-CPU Compaq DS-20s, dual-CPU API UP2000, and dual-CPU DEC AlphaServer 2100s. "

questionlp writes "The waiting is over! The May issue of Daemon News is now available on-line here. The new issue covers a wide range of topics from Webmin, web security via encryption and authentication, and the usual monthly Answerman column, plus a lot more." and jim writes "This month's first FreeBSD'zine issue includes articles on running BIND in a jail, scanning email for virii, an introduction to mutt, and keeping your FreeBSD docs tree up-to-date. Go take a look." Its also worth mentioning that starting this month, the 'zine will be released twice a month

Joseph Mallett writes "xMach today announces our brand new Core Team. We've also (finally) added a CVS server, as well as a CVSweb front-end so people can browse the source. Since the first Slashdot post, we've accomplished one of our major goals of being GPL-free (and thus fully BSD License'd), as well as added two mailing lists and fixed the wishlist code. Due to Mach's history with Multiprocessing, we are currently looking more and more and the ideas of distributed processing. The code base is now cleaned up, so that everything should compile out of box. Some of our more abitious goals are to move to a multiserver format, and do a major update of the filesystem interfaces, short term. And like the HURD, it's software that's here right now, and isn't vapourware."

Anonymous Coward writes "Chris Faulhaber, one of the TrustedBSD developers, announced on the trustedbsd-discuss mailing list that Samba's POSIX.1e ACL support is now working on FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT, and even has a screen shot. This has been a high-demand feature, apparently, and could be a big selling point for sites currently running Windows NT as their enterprise operating system.

chaoskitty writes "Jason Thorpe has gotten multiprocessor NetBSD/Alpha to go multiuser! He has already done a kernel build and full userland build with the multiprocessor kernel. More details are in Jason's message to the NetBSD tech-smp list.

BSD Today reports that embedded RTLinux company, FSM Labs has decided to move into NetBSD as a general purpose OS layer to RTLinux APIs. This is following Wind River's acquisition of the software assets of BSDi. Makes one wonder whether the competition in the BSD arena is about to begin.

jesseraf was one of the first to write, and now that the release is official we can post this. Release notes are available, or find the nearest mirror.

Major Grubert writes "BSDi Europe, Middle East and Africa has closed operations. I found out after not getting any news from our local rep (in Barcelona) after I'd sent him some feedback about a new server they'd let us test. Nothing about this on their website... We adore FreeBSD, and this doesn't inspire much confidence in BSDi (soon to be known as iX Systems) as a *BSD supporting company - they were actually making some inroads in the Spanish market. I hope at least our support contracts with them will be honoured..."

howardjp writes: "NetBSD has been ported to the Motorla Sandpoint, a reference PPC design board. Wasabi Systems did the port. I will not be happy until NetBSD runs on my Atari 1200XL."

jim writes: "This month's issue includes articles on Bochs, SMTP over an SSH tunnel, a more in-depth look at the FreeBSD Browser, and more. Go check it out!"

Anonymous Coward writes "I just downloaded xmach from xmach.org and it appears that they are now completely gpl free. I emailed one of the developers and he tells me that they have someone working on adding BSD drivers to it, and that he (the guy I emailed) is integrating ufs+ffs+softupdates from freebsd. Sounds like they're going to be producing something usable in the near future. Oh, and the full source tarball is less than 3megabytes. I guess they meant it when they said proactively not bloated."

big knife writes: "Check here for the official press release." Wind River is the company that puts out vxWorks, the embedded OS that runs our great Arrowpoint Web Content Switch we have here at OSDN. Evidently, BSDi will become iXsystems, dealing with BSD product solutions, and hardware (essentially a beefed up Telenet Systems). The status of FreeBSD and their commitment to Open Source, and FreeBSD in specific is mentioned, definitely a good thing.

Caladan writes "I've been lurking on the NetBSD Port-Dreamcast list, and I took note that someone regularly uses their Dreamcast as a webserver. Let's see if someone can write a Dreamcast emulator for BSD!"

A reader writes: "Every time BSD gets mentioned on Slashdot, the usual round of questions get asked. Most queries want to know what the differences in the BSDs are. For the April DaemonNews, James Howard has written the answer."

Alert (or at least awake) reader deran9ed points out this article covering AOL Time-Warner's acquisition of BSDi. Sounds like AOL has been busy with acquisitions lately; best of luck any software engineers displaced by the move. Hopefully we'll see an integration of OpenSSH and AIM as well.

An Anonymous Coward in red leather asks: "I mostly use my machine for desktop-user type stuff: web browsing, word processing, game playing, listening to MP3s, and so forth. Out of curiosity and general geekiness, I've tried a fair sampling of Open Source and other alternate OSes just for kicks (SuSe, Red Hat and Slackware Linux, BeOs, FreeBSD). My favorite, so far, has been FreeBSD. It's stable, fast, supports all my hardware (including nifty OSS sound drivers) and the ports tree makes installing new software painless. Yet when I tell my other Open Source type friends (including BSD users and supporters) that FreeBSD is my favorite Desktop operating system, they look at me funny and say, 'FreeBSD is a server operating system, weirdo.' My question is: Why is FreeBSD not considered a valid desktop choice? What would FreeBSD need added to it to make a desktop friendly BSD distribution?" Now I feel that *BSD is as much of a 'desktop system' as Linux. It may not be widely known as such, but still: "Have Desktop. Will Travel", and BSD does have a desktop, right?

mr writes "The boys and girls at Evans Data want to sell you a 178 page report about Linux. Now, they had a page that put FreeBSD between Caldara and Debian as far as how often it is used as a web server. They have pulled FreeBSD from the list. Seems Evans Data just figured out that FreeBSD isn't Linux. Did Evens Data use pages from TigerSoftware or perhaps the crack staff of Tucows?" There's also a Daily DaemonNews story with some figures.

GlockaDe writes: "FreeBSD is now a supported platform for the GNOME project. This means that now, new GNOME releases will not ship unless they successfully build and run on FreeBSD. The actual note is buried in these minutes."

KellyM writes "'I've spent the last three days fixing compile-time bugs with xMach, and I'm currently testing using a copy of VMware running FreeBSD. The code compiled so cleanly that a stable release was inevitable, allowing me to finally start doing some of the new innovative work I dreamed up years ago, when my SPARC (since dead due to a battery issue) glowed with warmth onto me, and inspired me to create. Who knows -- we might make something useful out of xMach yet. It's certainly come a long way from seed to sprout; as its stalk strengthens, I hope to help it blossom into the full beauty of the great scheme hatched years ago. '"

Rich Morin writes "The FreeBSD Browser, a "proof of concept" demonstration from the Meta Project, is also quite a useful tool. Given a path name, man page reference, or list of keywords, it can bring up a swath of relevant files and man pages. A recent article in FreeBSDzine discusses why the browser is useful, what it does, and (to a degree) how it works. Please give it a try..."