Download PC-BSD 7.1-rc1

PC-BSD is an operating system that uses the open source code of FreeBSD. It comes with KDE by default and the installation procedure is done graphically. In addition, the PBI system is included, which should make installing applications easier. The developers released the first release candidate of version 7.1 a few days ago. This release includes KDE 4.2.1, Xorg 7.4, Nvidia Driver 180.35, OpenOffice.org 2.4.2, Opera 9.63 and Firefox 3.0.0.6. The corresponding announcement and list of changes since the previous entry in the Meuktracker look like this:

PC-BSD 7.1-RC1 Released

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 7.1-RC1, running FreeBSD 7.2-Pre, and KDE 4.2.1 Version 7.1RC1 contains a number of enhancements and bugfixes from beta1. For a full list of changes, please refer to the changelog. Version 7.1-RC1 or PC-BSD is available for Download from our mirrors, as well as bittorrent from www.gotbsd.net. Also, translators are encouraged to check the Potle Translation page to confirm that their language is fully translated in preparation for 7.1-Release. As with the beta, please report any and all bugs to our Testing mailing list!

Version 7.1-RC1:

• Fixed bugs with nvidia driver replacing libwfb incorrectly
• Fixed bug finding version number when doing update from 7.1 -> 7.1
• Added tests for partition / slice space requirements during install
• Added pykde4 and KDE 4 printing utilities
• Fixed flash9 plugin on amd64
• Updated runports command to accept arguments for running apps in /usr/local
• Fixed several tools to use UTF-8 when reading file data, fixing localization issues
• Fixed CUPS ppd search paths, which improves number of available printing drivers.

Version 7.1-BETA1:

• Updated KDE to 4.2.1
• Updated Xorg to 7.4
• Updated NVIDIA driver to 180.35
• Updated FreeBSD to 7.1-Stable
• Implemented new desktop schematic, PC-BSD ports are now installed in /PCBSD/local
• Added support for installing and running FreeBSD ports, without effecting the desktop
• Re-implemented the “Upgrade” functionality from previous PC-BSD releases, now preserves the home data, along with /usr/local ports.
• Added gtklp, a GUI front-end to ‘lpr’, which allows setting options from programs which use lpr for printing.
• Incorporated “Online Updates” into the “Software and Updates Manager”, and re-wrote the tray application to be a notifer only.
• Added menu icons for “runports”, which allows building + running applications in the FreeBSD ports tree
• Added detection for vmware installs, and set kern.hz to provide a speedup and prevent clock drift
• Set hern.hz on normal systems to 100, which seems to provide a noticeable speed increase
• Fixed a bug in the update notifier tray, now re-scans for PBI updates after a PBI is installed, removed, or updated
• Fixed bugs loading i18n data during install, causing incorrect characters to appear
• Use ‘noatime’ file mount option during install, speeds up FS

Version 7.0.2:

• Updated KDE to 4.1.3
• Improved the Online Updater tool, to support proxy servers, and use custom TMPDIR
• Added KDE4 startup script for nvidia cards, which improves performance with desktop lag, and compositing effects
• Updated sound-detect script to support several new cards
• Fixed a series of bugs in the System Manager tool
  • Fixed occasional crash when using portsnap
  • Fixed bug preventing clicking of “apply” after changing settings
  • Fixed bug loading bootup splash screen images
• Fixed a bug with occasional hang’s at shutdown, due to hung knotify4 processes
• Fixed installation issues when trying to install PC-BSD to free disk space, and the partition does not yet exist
• Upgraded HAL to 0.5.11_8 which fixes errors when trying to eject optical media in KDE4 and improves NTFS-3G support
• Fixed a problem with scanner permissions preventing user scanning
• Fixed bug performing PBI updates, which removed the old PBI – but didn’t always install the new one
• Put a check in place to prevent using ZFS with less than 1GB of system memory

Version 7.0.1:

• Updated KDE to 4.1.2
• Update Nvidia driver to 177.80
• Fixed various bugs causing crashes with System Updater
• Fixed bugs with partitions becoming mis-aligned due to incorrect sizing
• Added support for NTFS writing directly in KDE4
• Fixed sound detection for ALI M5451 PCI Audio Device
• Fixed out of memory errors when installing on 256MB of RAM
• Added new KMenu->System->Display Setup Wizard icon to re-run the X Setup tool
• Added support for linux-flashplugin9 to the default install for i386 and amd64
• Fixed an error about setting up Xorg for QEMU on install
• 7.0.1 now includes all the KDE l10n packages by default, allowing users to switch languages ​​and locales “on-the-fly”
• Fixed a bug which caused a sound-detection error notification by mistake when the user was running an alternative OSS
• Fixed the Wifi tool to work with very long SSID’s and ones with multiple spaces in the name
• Updated the Wifi tool to allow network profiles, and connect to the best available network
• Added a new System Updater launcher to the System Settings utility
• Added support to xorg-gui to allow user to run radeonhd driver
• Corrected some apps showing up in their respective kickoff directory