FreeBSD 3.0 Enters Beta

Jordan K. Hubbard of the FreeBSD project wrote in with a statement regarding the recent entry of FreeBSD in to the world of beta. Read on if you're interested. Highlights include SMP, and a rewritten SCSI CAM subsystem, and perl5 ("perl4 is dead! long live perl4!").

FreeBSD's 3.0-CURRENT branch has just entered BETA status for the upcoming 3.0-RELEASE on October 15th. 3.0 is a major milestone for the FreeBSD project in that it incorporates many new features and improvements over 2.2.x. This includes a complete switch to ELF with backwards-compatibility for all older a.out libraries and executables (so ISVs need not worry), VM86 support (for accessing the PC BIOS from user/kernel mode), an in-kernel module linker, a completeley new CAM (Common Access Method) SCSI subsystem, a fully-integrated Perl5 development environment (perl4 is dead! long live perl4! :) and many other features. Early binary release snapshots will be made available at ftp://current.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ as usual, starting in a day or two.

He also said he'd be shot if he didn't include ATM networking and SMP =)