chris sent in a link to this story which reports on FreeBSD being used on 32 dual-processor machines to render special effects for The Matrix. With 32 dual-processor machines, I doubt there's much that they couldn't render.

An anonymous reader sent us an article about FreeBSD, and life in Linux's Shadow. Interesting article about the culture difference between Linux and FreeBSD users. Its a good one for you FreeBSD fans and you curious Linux users alike. I wish more BSD stuff came down the pipe here, but Linux just has the vast majority of the submissions here too.

Jason C. Wells writes "FreeBSD, Inc. has released FreeBSD 3.1. Please read the release notes. You can install FreeBSD 3.1 by following the instructions. Have fun with it! "

Herb Peyerl contributed this earlier in the week, but the NetBSD site did not confirm it for some time. "NetBSD now runs on Sun Ultrasparc hardware. NetBSD/sparc64 is the product of a 2-year effort. Currently, UltraSPARC I and II CPUs, esp SCSI controllers, le ethernet controllers, zs serial ports, cgsix graphics controllers are supported. Any of the other drivers from the NetBSD/sparc port might also work. The 32-bit kernel runs most NetBSD/sparc binaries. A 64-bit version of the system currently exists and runs on some hardware, but requires further development to be fully functional.". The latest snapshot is available.

Elwood writes "Well, the time has finally come. The 3.0 tree was branched to 3.1-stable (RELENG_3) and 4.0-current (HEAD) today. Whoo-Hoo! Time to make those FTP server do that thing they do... " Update: 01/21 09:28 by CT : clarification from Jesse FreeBSD 3.0 has become the FreeBSD-STABLE tree, a new tree in the CVS has just been made for development. 3.1-RELEASE will come in 1 month (Feb 15th).

ehovland writes "There is an interesting article about the BSD variants in the latest SunWorld. Nothing new for the experienced reader but lots of good info on what makes them different for those with no experience with them. What is especially scathing is the paragraph which compares the cdrom archive with Microsoft's suggestions for a good ftp server cluster:" In contrast to Microsoft's 6 GB of downloads per day, however, it routinely transfers more than 700 GB of data a day for to up to 3,600 concurrent users." " I think we need a generic BSD icon.

Woody wrote in to tell us that NetBSD 1.3.3. was released on December 23rd. Full list of changes here.

nikc writes "The December 17th issue of LinuxWorld features an excellent article about FreeBSD. It's refreshingly free from hype and unsubstantiated claims often made by supporters of both systems, and well worth reading. "

bghandhi was the first to let us know that OpenBSD 2.4 has been released. The new release contains lots of new ethernet drivers (esp. for SBUS cards), security improvements, and a lot more integrated crypto: a shared SSL library, IPSEC improvements, and more. You can find a summary of the most important changes here. If you would like to support the project, please order the US$30 CD set (which includes stickers!)

Eivind Eklund wrote in to say FreeBSD 2.2.8 has been released. See the announcment here. Some of the important changes include support for IDE drives larger than 8GB, a 3c905B driver, Linux emulation support improvement, as well as all BugTraq advisories against 2.2.7.

KeLp writes "The November issue of Daemon News just hit the wire. All can take a check it out at www.daemonnews.org Also the latest issue of the FreeBSD Quick NewsLetter it out there. Very good stuff! "

kfort writes "ftp.cdrom.com has set a new record, serving up 759 GB of data in one day! The machine that did it is a single p6/200 with 1 GB of RAM and half a TB of RAID-5 storage. It broke the old record on October 24th, and broke it again today! Long live FreeBSD! "

r3cgm writes "Today, we opened up The FreeBSD Mall. This site is dedicated to showcasing all manner of FreeBSD products. It also includes HTML'ized versions of the 2 FreeBSD newsletters we've done so far (very slick if I do say so myself). Feedback and comments are appreciated. "

Derek D Owens was the first to write in and tell us that FreeBSD 3.0-Release is appearing on the FreeBSD main ftp site , all you BSD boys and girls can rejoice, download and have at it.

Linux Weekly News Daily refers to a nice informative article in the Irish Times about how Free Unixes (Linux and FreeBSD) are used at Trinity College (Dublin).