Chris Coleman is putting his money where his mouth is, after his recent suggestion that the BSDs need a unified package collection. The creation of www.openpackages.org was the next logical step, and Chris discusses this in his latest Daemon News editorial. With representatives from the three free BSD projects, as well as Apple (MacOS X) on board, this certainly has the potential to bring about closer ties between the BSD distributions at a level that will affect a lot of users.

by by writes "O'Reillynet's OpenBSD Explained column recently explained how to setup IPv6 on OpenBSD. Interesting glimpse into the future of the Internet." True enough. It was my impression that the BSDs all got IPv6 at the same time though, courtesy of the work carried out by the KAME group. On a very much related note, Jim O'Gorman has written an IPv6 Behind a NAT article for this month's Daemon News, which also makes getting involved in IPv6 easier.

A reader writes "At his keynote at Seybold today, Steve Jobs announced that Mac OS X beta will ship on September 13th. More details at MacNN's site." This is the beta - but the Sept. 13th beta launch is the first day of Paris Mac Expo, meaning that it probably will happen. He also confirmed that they are on target for an "early 2001" release of OSX.

Anonymous Coward writes "Titled The World's Most Secure OS, this article in The Standard talks about what is needed to be "Secure by Default"" Probably the best OpenBSD article I've read in recent months. Theo doesn't pull his punches (then again, he never does), in particular, discounting the "more eyes means better security" philosophy. Then again, he's probably right. [ Update: noeld wrote in with a link to a similar article at rootprompt.org. Must be something in the water. ]

AntiBasic writes "OutRider Computing Journal has a nice, albeit short, overview of both sysctl(8) and sysctl(3) under BSD systems. It has some examples using the sysctl command as well as examples with sample code on using the sysctl subroutines."

AntiBasic writes "An absolute "must read" for FreeBSD users out there. This month's issue includes VLAN interface configuration, installing FreeBSD on a Dell Inspiron 5000 and the founding of a BUG in Yucatan, Mexico. Check out Issue #7"

david@ecsd.com asks: "I've been using Linux for quite some time now and I've been thinking about giving one of the BSD's a whirl on my box at home. I've come to really like Linuxconf and have been wondering if there's anything like that for the BSD's or even if anyone has ported it to BSD. I really, really hate having to delve through 100s configuration text files to find the right one to edit."

As this release announces, BSDi have just licensed the BSD/OS Parallel TCP/IP stack to Compaq for use in their Himalaya range of servers. Which is great, but I'm still trying to work out why they called them "Himalaya."

qbasicprogrammer writes "Chris Coleman wrote to Daily Daemon News suggesting a unified package collection. Currently OpenBSD, NetBSD, and FreeBSD maintain separate ports/package trees. Chris points out the various BSD package collections all carry different versions Mozilla; a common ports system would certainly benefit everyone."

I just got word from the fine folks at LokiSoft announcing that they are partnering with BSDi to produce games for BSD. Very cool -- my hat is off to all involved. Here's the press release.

qbasicprogrammer writes: "At Daily Daemon News, Josh Pennell says the Reform Party's National Primary Online Election was constantly under attack during the 72-hour election window, however IOActive (the Reform Party's hosting service)'s OpenBSD server kept the kiddies and crackers away. According to the reader comments, Ralph Nader is using BSD/OS, as is the Libertarian Party Web site. It's nice to see political parties believe in freedom of software."

qbasicprogrammer writes: "FreeBSD Basics on The O'Reilly Network covers some of the more useful FreeBSD commands that make computer life easier, including commands for things like scrolling through virtual terminals and checking date, time, and current working directory. Good read for the BSD neophyte."

WasterDave wrote in with this link to information about zero copy sockets on FreeBSD. Some hunting turned up more detailed information about NetBSD and Gigabit networking. Pointers to similar information for OpenBSD are appreciated...

AntiBasic writes "The August 2000 issue of the Daemon News ezine has been published. Content includes the last of the USENIX 2000 coverage (three articles), a Blueprints article on writing an ISA device driver, how to set up FreeBSD on a Compaq iPaq box, and more!"

An AC submitted this interesting tidbit from those folks over at NetCraft. To quote from the page: "HotMail has commenced its much awaited migration to a Microsoft operating system. Some Windows 2000 machines have recently been moved into the load balancing pool, with currently between 90-95% of requests being served by the established FreeBSD/Apache platform, and 5-10% from Windows 2000." This is not the first time MS are believed to have attempted this (but I'd appreciate hard evidence confirming that, instead of the more normal rumours and whispers).

Cabal writes: "FreeBSD 3.5.1-RELEASE is now available for the x86 and alpha architectures. There have been a few important changes in both the kernel and userland, plus several security fixes were included. Most important is the inclusion of the new kerberos security updates. 3.5.1 is the continuation and most likely final release of the 3.x branch. New development continues on 5.x. The release notes have the full details on what's changed, you can download 3.5.1 from here or the i386 ISO image from here." But why no CVS tag? Read on for the explanation. . .

Dr. Banana writes "Jordan Hubbard announced that FreeBSD 4.1 is now available on ftp.freebsd.org. You can read the release notes here. The ISO will be available on August 1."

AnonymousCow writes "At LinuxTag, an unbiased comparison of performance of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, and Solaris." I'll let Tim's comment on this story stand: "Unbiased is hard to claim - all tests can be seen as biased in their formulation - but this is thorough, with 45 slides and well-explained methodology -- BSD does very well ..."

Fawking DSL writes "Issue #06 of the FreeBSD 'Zine is out. In this issue, the writers explain how to get the best of both worlds (FreeBSD and Windows) using Samba or VNC, how to convert files from Linux, and the collapse of a FreeBSD user group. Michelle Sutton reviews another Solitaire-type game known as PySol. The FreeBSD 'Zine is in great need of new articles, if you have any send them on in."

Fawking DSL writes "``NetBSD can be intimidating from a Linux user's perspective. However, as the Linux user base grows, more people are finding their needs aren't being met by traditional Linux distributions. NetBSD is ready to step up to fill this niche. While Linux and NetBSD share many characteristics, there are some key differences.'' Check out this article at BSD Today."