Jim Mock writes in to "announce the hardcopy release of the FreeBSD Handbook. Written by the FreeBSD Documentation Project, the FreeBSD Handbook is a comprehensive guide to installing and running FreeBSD, and covers the installation and day-to-day use of FreeBSD, the ports collection, kernel configuration, the X Window System, printing, FreeBSD's Linux binary compatibility support, upgrading your system from source by using the ``make world'' command, and much more." Read on for more details.

Anonymous Coward writes: "One of the more significant statements of the session [at Apple's WorldWide Developer's Conference] came when Magee told the audience that the Mach kernel and the BSD layer which lays upon it are inseparable. "Every application [that runs in Mac OS X] is a BSD application," said Magee. "You can't keep the system running without the Mach kernel and the BSD layer." This quashes the public rumour that Apple will be able to ship a "lite" version of Mac OS X which will contain only the smallest possible bit of BSD, or another that questions Apple reluctance to move its tools to Linux."

Duke of URL writes: "Sam Williams, of Upside Today has an article discussing OpenBSD's overall design philosophy, with good quotes from Theo de Raadt, the OpenBSD project leader. Williams also covers how the OpenBSD project goes about supporting their financial needs (by selling t-shirts, CDs, and posters) and briefly covers their lack of desire to receive venture capital despite offers. "

drix was the first to write in with this "Standard fare roots of the BSD/hacker movement piece over at Salon. The picture of the FreeBSD devil guy is pretty cool." This is actually another chapter in Andrew Leonard's Free Software Project online book. Well written, but occasional errors (FreeBSD and BSDI have not merged, for example) cast doubt on some of the facts. Informed comment from people who were there would be appreciated.

jim writes: "The latest issue (Issue #04) of The FreeBSD 'zine is now available on the Web site. Yes, we know we're a day early -- all the more reason to go check it out now." Those with laptops, or particularly recent hardware will no doubt find the hints about USB Floppy Drives of particular interest.

Dan Langille, creator and maintainer of the FreeBSD Diary, has just unleashed FreshPorts on the world. In a nutshell, this is a changing list of new and updated ports in the FreeBSD ports tree, making it easy to keep bang up to date with new software as it's ported. It's a natural companion to Wolfram Schneider's fortnightly port update messages.

In another installment of the "BSD code popping up in odd places story", Intel are promulgating the Extensible Firmware Interface, a new abstraction layer for the "operating system and platform firmware". As this PDF slideshow shows, libc in the EFI layer is from FreeBSD (page 9), as is the TCP/IP stack (page 11). Finally Intel appear to be releasing the whole thing under something very close to a BSD license (page 15). Which is nice.

Should you be anywhere near the Hyatt Regency in Monterey, Calif. in mid-October then you'll be perfectly placed to attend this year's BSD Conference. More details can be had from the Conference Web site, or from the precis you'll see if you read on.

darkuncle writes: "While doing some research into setting up an OpenBSD box as a firewall/NAT box/DHCP server for my home network, I ran across a cool writeup at 2600 Australia about how to implement IPv6 on OpenBSD. For anybody that's been thinking about exploring IPv6, this article (along with the FAQ linked above) provides some good starting points. "

Looking for something to do with that old PS/2 in the cupboard? NetBSD can now be booted on it. Support is strictly experimental at the moment, and available as a patchset to the main code.

DaemonNews for May is now hot off the presses^Wweb server. Feature articles this month include a BSD viewpoint on Spring Comdex, an overview of what to do post-installation, and an investigation of the viability of RAIDframe.

schvin writes: "While this does require a free logon, please comment over at the Java Developer Connection to request that Sun port future JDK releases to FreeBSD. You can vote here. "

As this release explains, BSDI are about to start providing support contracts for FreeBSD. Support options will include options from per-incident to 24x7 support. Linux already has a number of high profile companies providing support contracts, such as Red Hat, and IBM. It'll be interesting to see how much of an issue the availability of BSD support turns out to be.

Fans of the OpenBSD artwork (like myself) can now get two posters with the infamous blowfish. The first is armed to the gills, while the second includes the OpenSSHeriff. Get thee to the order page and spend some money.

The European Unix Platform e-zine is running an interview with Theo de Raadt (OpenBSD head honcho) in which he talks a little about his thoughts on the WC/BSDI merger, embedded OpenBSD, and the openssh.{com,org} dispute. Alex de Joode, also involved in the dispute, has written a reply to Theo's points.

reidhoch asks: "My school would like to create a small cluster, we want to use BSD but can't think of any BSD clustering projects. We don't have the time and/or resources to start such a project either. If you know of any such ongoing projects, please enlighten me."

Bob Bruce writes: "There will be a BSD BOF (Birds Of a Feather meeting) at Spring Comdex, on Wednesday April 19 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The BOF is at the Essex Inn at Grant Park, Chicago. You do not need to be a Comdex attendee to come along, everyone is welcome." Read on for more details.

keepper writes. . . well, absolutely nothing actually. But he (or she) did send a pointer to There's no BS in BSD, another ZDNet think piece on the Walnut Creek/BSDI merger.

As seen on the OpenBSD -announce list, OpenBSD now has hardware cryptographic support to boost IPSEC performance. "Currently, only cards using the HiFn 7751 chip can be used. This Hifn chip is an IPSEC-oriented DES/3DES and SHA1/MD5 hmac engine; ie. only symmetric cryptography..&nbsp.we are getting 63.12Mb/s 3des/sha1 ESP IPSEC. That's documented as the top performance the chip can provide. In other words, we're pretty damn impressed at ourselves." Read on for more from the message, or go straight to the OpenBSD Hardware Crypto page.

vrkid writes: "Found this on OpenBSD Journal: OpenBSD just moved up a notch in its minor number and is now at 7. The first beta release of 2.7 is out. For people with strong stomachs, a habit of banging the head against the wall and a love for testing other's software: Download, install and send bug reports. "