With the release of FreeBSD® 9 and PC-BSD® 9 Isotope just around the corner, we thought we’d take a look at the new things coming in this version of the operating system.
The biggest change in PC-BSD® is that GNOME, LXDE, and XFCE are now fully supported, along with KDE. This means that many more users will be able to use their preferred desktop environment while taking full advantage of all the features and utilities PC-BSD® provides. Furthermore, the PBI system is now completely independent of the X Window System, so FreeBSD® users who wish to do so can install pbi-manager from ports and take advantage of the advanced package and dependency management of PC-BSD® from the command line.
The PBI system has been completely overhauled in PC-BSD® 9. PBIs are now managed from an all-new utility, AppCafe™, which replaces PC-BSD® 8’s Software Manager. Programs installed as PBIs now share libraries when they use the same versions as other programs, or maintain a separate version if needed. This helps make sure that library updates won’t inadvertently break a working program, while also conserving disk space.
Other utilities, such as the new printer manager and the Warden™ are all easily accessed from the PC-BSD® control panel, which is also independent of window manager. One great utility is the Life Preserver, which makes it easy to back up your PC-BSD® system to a FreeNAS™ system or other remote server using rsync or ZFS replication.
FreeBSD®
On the FreeBSD® side, one thing we’re greatly looking forward to is ZFS v28. ZFS (the Zettabyte File System) is an open source 128-bit file system. It provides features like software RAID-Z (which gives you up to triple-redundancy storage without a RAID controller), active bitrot repair (which restores corrupted files from redundancies automatically) and snapshots and replication (which allow you to take a version of the filesystem and incrementally back it up to a remote ZFS volume). ZFS is well-suited for enterprise use, which is why it’s also used in the FreeNAS™ Project. PC-BSD® 9 supports ZFS volumes at install time or afterward.
PC-BSD® 9 and FreeBSD® 9 have given us a lot to look forward to. To learn more about PC-BSD® or download a copy for yourself, visit PCBSD.org.
Ben Milman
Marketing Assistant
