Google Summer of Code Projects started
FreeBSD News Flash: The FreeBSD Project again received many high quality applications from students participating in Google’s Summer of Code program. This year 18 student proposals to work with the FreeBSD Project were accepted as part of this program. For those with projects that were not accepted this year, we’d like to note that the FreeBSD Project is always willing to help mentor students so they can learn more about operating system development through our normal community mailing lists and development forums.
Read more at FreeBSD.org.
FreeBSD 8.1 beta coming soon
The FreeBSD 8.1 code freeze is scheduled for May 24th. A beta release will be publicly available on May 28th. The more testing that can be done by the community, the more bugs that can be worked out before the release.
Currently the official release is scheduled to be available on or after July 9th. 8.1 will be a long term release of the FreeBSD operating system.
Quick tip: Updating FreeBSD with freebsd-update
The freebsd-update application is a great tool for updating or upgrading quickly. It’s quite easy to use and other functionality, too. You should always update if there are any FreeBSD security issues that affect your configuration.
First you want to run the following commands as root:
# freebsd-update fetch && freebsd-update install
Then, if all goes well you want to reboot:
# reboot now
And your update is completed! Make sure everything starts up that should and works as you expect it to. This process is easier than building from source, but you don’t get the same performance increase.
For virtual images and lower end computers it may be more advantageous to build the entire OS or at least the kernel from source and reduce unnecessary functionality.
Using open source solutions in small business
Now that Linux is no longer a new word in the small business vocabulary it’s time to consider where it may fit in to your company. Running a small business has a lot to do with managing resources efficiently and enhancing productivity wherever possible. Open source software can help.