Linux Distributions

DesktopBSD 1.6 Available Now

BSD for desktop PCs!

By Marius Nestor, Linux Editor

9th of January 2008, 11:35 GMT

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The DesktopBSD development team proudly presents the final release of DesktopBSD 1.6. This version comes with a great number of new features and improvements over previous releases. It is based on the FreeBSD 6.3 RC2 and provides an enhanced KDE 3.5.8 desktop environment. Here are the major changes:

￭ FreeBSD 6 as a modern and reliable base system
￭ X.Org release 7.3, improving support for modern graphics hardware
￭ Live CD/DVD feature for testing the system without installation to a hard drive
￭ Revised installer supporting upgrades from 1.0 and previous 1.6 release candidates
￭ Improved package manager usability and performance
￭ Many enhancements and bugfixes for the DesktopBSD tools
￭ Support for multiple processors and multi-core CPUs
￭ Inclusion of the NVIDIA graphics driver for hardware 3D rendering
￭ DesktopBSD build servers as an up-to-date source for precompiled packages

Let's have a look now at the included software

that can be found in both the CD and DVD editions:

￭ Amarok (Music player) 1.4.7
￭ K3B (CD/DVD burning tool) 1.0.4
￭ KTorrent (BitTorrent client) 2.2.2
￭ Mozilla Firefox (Web browser) 2.0.0.11
￭ Mozilla Thunderbird (Email/News client) 2.0.0.9
￭ Pidgin (Multi-protocol Instant Messenger) 2.3.1
￭ VLC (VideoLAN client) 0.8.6d
￭ digiKam (Digital photo management) 0.9.3

The following packages are only on the DVD edition of DesktopBSD 1.6:

￭ OpenOffice.org (Office suite) 2.3.1
￭ More KDE packages, such as KDE PIM and KDevelop
￭ Gutenprint high-quality printer drivers
￭ Translation packages

The following are differences between the i386 (32-bit) and amd64 (64-bit) release:

￭ The NVIDIA graphics driver with hardware 3D rendering is only available for i386 and, therefore, not included in the amd64 release.
￭ GRUB is only supported on i386 and replaced with the default FreeBSD boot menu on amd64.

About DesktopBSD

With over 16,000 packages available, DesktopBSD aims at being a stable and powerful operating system for desktop users. It combines the stability of FreeBSD, the usability and functionality of KDE and the simplicity of specially developed software to provide a system that's easy to use and install. The main goal of the DesktopBSD project is to provide a desktop operating system that's easy to use, but still has all the functionality and power of BSD.

Download DesktopBSD 1.6 right now from Softpedia.

TAGS:

DesktopBSD | FreeBSD | BSD | operating system

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User opinions:

Comment #1 by: John Lloyd on 15 Jan 2008, 11:24 GMT

reply to this comment

I got the DVD on release day. It is easy to install, works with my wireless USB (amazing!), gives an excellent range of up-to-date software (and thousands more applications from freeBSD), and performs well. What I like best is that it just adds a well implemented desktop (KDE) and well integrated tools to help desktop users. No fuss, no hype, it just does what it says on the box! The weekly up-to-date builds are a great idea that should speed-up the implementation on freeBSD 7.

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