Enabling users to opt for a regular FreeBSD 8 install

Feb 23, 2010 15:53 GMT  ·  By

The people behind PC-BSD, a FreeBSD-based distribution, have announced the release of PC-BSD 8.0 (Hubble Edition). This newest update is built on the latest FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2 and running the eye-pleasing, if not bleeding-edge, KDE 4.3.5. It's a major update so it comes with plenty of bug fixes and new features over the previous PC-BSD 7.x. "The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 8.0 (Hubble Edition), running FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2, and KDE 4.3.5PC-BSD 8.0 contains a number of enhancements and improvements over the 7.x series," read the official announcement.

Highlights of PC-BSD 8.0 (Hubble Edition):

· FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2 · KDE 4.3.5 · Brand new System Installer, allows the install of PC-BSD or FreeBSD · Run in Live mode directly from DVD · Updated Software Manager, allows browsing and installing applications directly · Support for 3D acceleration with NVIDIA drivers on amd64.

Under the hood:

· Xorg 7.4 · Firefox 3.5.7 · GIMP 2.6.8 · K3B 1.0.5 · OpenOffice 3.1.1 · Opera 10.10 · Pidgin 2.6.4 · The Warden 0.9.1 · VLC 1.0.4 · FreeBSD Ports Tree · FreeBSD System Source.

Out of the most interesting new features, PC-BSD 8.0 comes with a Live mode, which enables you to run it straight from the DVD though it's not exactly what you'd expect, running Live will drop you to the command line and you have to figure it out from there. Also useful is the option to install the vanilla FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-P2 instead of PC-BSD if you want to go down that route.

PC-BSD is aimed at the more casual audience, well, as casual as a BSD user gets anyway, and is intended for general-purpose desktop tasks like web browsing, multimedia, document and spreadsheet editing and the likes. With that in mind, PC-BSD 8.0 comes with a simplified app install process so you can get your favorite applications with just a few clicks.

Download PC-BSD 8.0 (Hubble Edition) right now from Softpedia.