FreeSBIE Blog

Announce: FreeSBIE-2.0.1 Available

2007-02-11T05:51:00.000-08:00

All,

you may remember that FreeSBIE 2.0 was released on January 15th. It turned out it had some annoying bugs, one of which was especially serious, as it prevents USB mice from working. This fact led us, the FreeSBIE Staff, to develop a bugfix release, 2.0.1. All the bugs that have been pointed out were solved and this release has been more thoroughfully tested, to offer a better FreeSBIE experience to our users.

FreeSBIE 2.0.1-RELEASE (codename Black Mamba)is based on FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE, both in terms of sources and of packages. It contains more than 450 pieces and 1.3 gigabytes of software, all in a single CD-ROM of 672 megabytes.

The ISO image can be downloaded from FreeSBIE official mirrors, a list of which is available at http://www.freesbie.org/mirrors.php .

MD5 checksum for the ISO image is:
MD5 (FreeSBIE-2.0.1-RELEASE.iso) = b2f680d27c21bbfaf4fb90dce090a118

BitTorrent lovers can get it from
http://torrent.freesbie.org/FreeSBIE-2.0.1-RELEASE.iso.torrent

Screenshots are available at http://www.freesbie.org/screenshots.html
(look for 2.0 screenshots, as nothing important has been changed since 2.0-RELEASE)

Release Notes, Manual and FAQ can be found at http://www.freesbie.org/share/2.0.1/manual/

Feel free to send feedback and bug reports to staff@freesbie.org .

Enjoy FreeSBIE and spread FreeBSD!

Thank you all.

Testers Wanted: FreeSBIE 2.0.1-RC2 available

2007-02-03T05:22:00.000-08:00

A new ISO image is available, FreeSBIE 2.0.1-RC2. It is the second release candidate for FreeSBIE 2.0.1, and hopefully the last before the release. I’d like to thank all the testers who reported bugs.
You can get it from our BitTorrent server: http://torrent.freesbie.org/FreeSBIE-2.0.1-RC2.iso.torrent
If I don’t get any additional bug report in the next 7 days, I’ll release this image as FreeSBIE 2.0.1, so if you’re interested in FreeSBIE, please give RC2 a try.
Thanks in advance.

Call For Testers: FreeSBIE 2.0.1-RC

2007-01-29T00:25:00.000-08:00

All,
as you may have noticed, there was a serious bug in FreeSBIE 2.0-RELEASE: devd didn’t get started at boot due to a bug in the backup plugin and USB mice didn’t get any moused on their port.

I solved this and other bugs (see recent commits) and would like you to test a new image which will be released (when ready) as 2.0.1 . As you’re subscribed to this list, I think you’re interested in FreeSBIE, so I ask for your help. It is available only on BitTorrent: http://torrent.freesbie.org/FreeSBIE-2.0.1-RC.iso.torrent

Please test it and report any bug or issue you find.

Thanks in advance.

FreeSBIE-2.0-RELEASE Available!

2007-01-15T12:26:00.000-08:00

All,

today is a good day, as we, the FreeSBIE team, reached our goal: it’s the day we release FreeSBIE 2.0.

Development cycle started on August 2006 and, after many months and a series of four ISO images, an official stable FreeSBIE image is available. It went under many changes, many experiments, many bugfixes, many features’ additions, but it was worth the work and the time we spent on it. We must express our thanks to everyone involved in the release process.
FreeSBIE 2.0-RELEASE (codename Clint Eastwood) is based on the fresh FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE, both in terms of sources and of packages. It contains more than 450 pieces and 1,3 gigabytes of software, all in a single CD-ROM of 668 megabytes.

The ISO image can be download from FreeSBIE official mirrors, a list of which is available at http://www.freesbie.org/mirrors.php

MD5 checksum for the ISO image is:

MD5 (FreeSBIE-2.0-RELEASE.iso) = bb98890aa8ce4fd9d35b5842baa34fdb

For you BitTorrent lovers:

http://torrent.freesbie.org/FreeSBIE-2.0-RELEASE.iso.torrent

Screenshots are available at http://www.freesbie.org/screenshots.html

Release Notes, Manual and FAQ can be found at http://www.freesbie.org/share/2.0/manual/

Feel free to send feedback and bug reports to staff@freesbie.org .

Enjoy FreeSBIE and spread FreeBSD!

Thank you all.

RFC: FreeSBIE 2.0 Release Notes Preview

2006-12-11T00:33:00.000-08:00

Hi folks,

I just finished the first writing of the FreeSBIE 2.0 Release Notes and I would be happy if you could read them to find mistakes, unclear statements, missing parts, and so on.

They're available at http://users.gufi.org/~rionda/20relnotes/. DocBook source is available at http://users.gufi.org/~rionda/20relnotes/article.sgml.

Send patches (SGML or plain text) to me or to the freesbie@gufi.org ML

Thanks.

As a side note, some FreeSBIE 2.0(-RC2) screenshots are available at: http://users.gufi.org/~rionda/20screen/.

FreeSBIE 2.0-RC1 available

2006-11-26T12:14:00.000-08:00

All,

if you followed the development of FreeSBIE 2.0 a bit, you should remember that, back in Semptember, I said that FreeSBIE 2.0 would have been the last of a series of four ISO images. Three images were already published: FreeSBIE GMV back in August, FreeSBIE LVC in October, FreeSBIE 2.0-BETA in November. Well, circustamces make me release a fourth ISO image which is *not* FreeSBIE 2.0, but FreeSBIE 2.0-RC1 (Release Candidate 1). This is due to the number of bugs which had been fixed after 2.0-BETA was released. If no major bugs are found, FreeSBIE 2.0 is going to be released not too long after FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE has been released. Hopefully you will be able to put a FreeSBIE 2.0 CD-ROM under your Christmas tree. :)

FreeSBIE 2.0-RC1 is based on the RELENG_6_2 branch of the FreeBSD source tree and on the RELEASE_6_2_0 branch of the ports tree.

Testing the ISO image, finding bugs and reporting them back to me or to the freesbie at gufi.org mailing list are the foci for those who want to give this ISO image a try, and I hope many of you will. There is still a lot of free space on the ISO image, so feel free to suggest additional software to include.

FreeSBIE 2.0-RC1 can be downloaded from our mirrors:

ftp://ftp.freesbie.org/pub/Freesbie/2.0-RC1/

ftp://ftp2.freesbie.org/pub/FreeSBIE/2.0-RC1/

ftp://ftp.gr.freesbie.org/pub/FreeSBIE/2.0-RC1/

ftp://ftp.be.freesbie.org/pub/freesbie/2.0-RC1/

ftp://ftp2.ie.freesbie.org/pub/freesbie/2.0-RC1/

ftp://ftp.fr.freesbie.org/freesbie/2.0-RC1/

ftp://ftp8.de.freesbie.org/unix/FreeSBIE/2.0-RC1

MD5 checksum for the ISO image is:

MD5 (FreeSBIE-2.0-RC1-20061123.iso) = 9dfced489f6fd083f10b14e23c25079

Thank you in advance for testing FreeSBIE 2.0-RC1

FreeSBIE 2.0-BETA (EW) is available!

2006-11-12T01:26:00.000-08:00

So, gears are warming up for the release of FreeSBIE 2.0, more than a year and half after FreeSBIE 1.1 had been released. Yesterday FreeSBIE 2.0-BETA, codename EW was released. Read the full announcement.

FreeSBIE 2.0-BETA (EW) is near

2006-11-03T00:38:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that I should study, my machine is building one or FreeSBIE ISO images every day.

Testing is going on to have a good FreeSBIE 2.0-BETA, so that we can release FreeSBIE 2.0 right after the RELENG_6_2 src branch was (has been?..native speakers, help!) created. I know you readers want a precise date. Well, I would say:"next week". Is this enough for you? ;)

Announce: FreeSBIE LVC is Out

2006-10-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

FreeSBIE LVC is finally out, exactly on time. Read the complete announcement of FreeSBIE LVC.

As always, feedback is really appreciated, thanks!

Progress in LVC

2006-09-29T02:09:00.000-07:00

So, I started working on LVC. This includes learning a bit of the Forth language to write an advanced boot menu, similar to what Knoppix has. It's not so easy, I must admit, but it's fun anyway =)

Release of GMV is still scheduled for October 12th.

Thinking about FreeSBIE LVC

2006-09-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

It's time to think about the next FreeSBIE ISO image I want to release. It will be the second in a series of four that will end with the release of FreeSBIE 2.0, which I hope will be based on FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE (may be with some additions regarding the ports) and will hopefully be released at EuroBSDCon 2006 in Milan, the 12th of November.

The only time milestone I impose myself is to release LVC (and if you read the announcement of GMV, you'll understand what LVC stands for) around the October, 7th.

If you tried FreeSBIE GMV (and if you didn't I suggest/ask you to do), please send me any feedback you consider valuable for the developement (missing software, software configurations, insults, thankses, whatever). Thanks.

FreeSBIE GMV

2006-08-19T01:03:00.000-07:00

I released a new unofficial image. Read the announcement and download the ISO.

Backup Plugin and Network Appliances

2006-07-20T00:31:00.000-07:00

I went on holyday in the mountains for 5 days, together with my mountain bike and my laptop. I finally get the backup and restore plugin done and I'm building a test ISO now to see if it work as expected ("I only proved it correct, didn't test it", D. Knuth).

I'm studying how NanoBSD works, to see how we can do the same and make our userbase happy :D

What have I been doing lately

2006-07-12T09:58:00.000-07:00

During the last 2 weeks I’ve been really busy with my university exams. On Monday afternoon I took a break and wrote a new l10n plugin for FreeSBIE. From next Thursday on, I’ll be on holyday for some weeks (2-3) and will work more on FreeSBIE, trying to make it able to do what phk@’s NanoBSD is able to do.

In a recent discussion following the commit of a PC-BSD piece of news on the FreeBSD site, I was really happy to hear rwatson@ say:”We’ve benefitted a lot from FreeSBIE’s involvement in FreeBSD especially.” Thanks Robert, we’re trying to do our best.

UnionFS started working!

2006-06-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

Yes! With the latest patch made by Daichi GOTO things started rolling with UnionFS. I'm making builds for both unionfs and non-unionfs versions and I want to make some benchmark to see if something is degrading our performances. At the moment unionfs builds have kernel debugging features enabled, so eventual benchmarks are not valid with builds distributed with torrent.

Another nice news is that a guy in University of Versailles is using FreeSBIE to make a live cd containing all the free software useful to the students. Nice idea! I'd like to set up a page on our website containing a list of all the projects that are using FreeSBIE for some reasons.

The guy asked us how to enable the autologin in a live system. There's a nice and efficient way do to it here.

(active) work in progress

2006-05-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

As you can note from the torrent site, we're making very frequent builds. Our actual build machine takes up to two days to make a complete build of ports and system. We now moved FreeBSD ports date to May 30th so we need the whole rebuild. Anyway next build should start rock, I'm keeping on configuring the xfce environment which Matteo started to configure a month ago or so. We have a fully functional OpenOffice.org and other usual programs. If you download the iso, just login as freesbie user with no password and type startx. Feedback on video card recognition are also appreciated.

The partial TODO list for the release is:

- configure the autologin and menu stuff
- keep on configuring xfce, torsmo and idesk
- start configuring fluxbox
- configure the BSDInstaller

Desired features for the release are:

- USB backup/restore scripts
- improvement to the video card (e.g.: detect other resolutions than 1024x768 so the user can change it from xfce4 settings to an higher level)

Also feel free to suggest new packages to add to the iso. A non exhaustive list is here, dependencies are not included.

The donations page is finally up. If you like FreeSBIE, consider making a tiny donation to us.

Moving to blogger

2006-05-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Due to the annoying comment spam and the lack of a captcha capability in b2evo engine, we're moving all the blog engine to blogger.

Old blog will be still available for archive purposes at oldblog.freesbie.org