Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

PC-BSD Follows a Rolling Release Model, Gets Renamed To TrueOS

Posted by BeauHD on from the fun-for-the-whole-family dept.

prisoninmate quotes a report from Softpedia: By following a rolling release model, TrueOS promises to be a cutting-edge and modern FreeBSD-based operating system for your personal computer, designed with security and simplicity in mind -- all while being stable enough to be deployed on servers. TrueOS will also make use of the security technologies from the OpenBSD project, and you can get your hands on the first Beta ISO images right now. The development team promises to offer you weekly ISO images of TrueOS, but you won't have to download anything anymore due to constant updates thanks to the rolling release model. TrueOS will use LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL, offer Linux DRM 4.7 compatibility for supporting for Intel Skylake, Haswell, and Broadwell graphics, and uses the pkg package manage system by default. "TrueOS combines the convenience of a rolling release distribution with the failsafe technology of boot environments, resulting in a system that is both current and reliable. TrueOS now tracks FreeBSD's 'Current' brand and merges features from select FreeBSD developer branches to enhance support for newer hardware and technologies," reads today's announcement.

1 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Tracking Current? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So now PC-B, er, TrueOS is tracking FreeBSD-CURRENT? What exactly is their intended use-case? From the wonderful FreeBSD manual:

    FreeBSD-CURRENT is the “bleeding edge” of FreeBSD development and FreeBSD-CURRENT users are expected to have a high degree of technical skill. Less technical users who wish to track a development branch should track FreeBSD-STABLE instead.

    FreeBSD-CURRENT is made available for three primary interest groups:
    1. Members of the FreeBSD community who are actively working on some part of the source tree.
    2. Members of the FreeBSD community who are active testers. They are willing to spend time solving problems, making topical suggestions on changes and the general direction of FreeBSD, and submitting patches.
    3. Users who wish to keep an eye on things, use the current source for reference purposes, or make the occasional comment or code contribution.

    FreeBSD-CURRENT should not be considered a fast-track to getting new features before the next release as pre-release features are not yet fully tested and most likely contain bugs. It is not a quick way of getting bug fixes as any given commit is just as likely to introduce new bugs as to fix existing ones. FreeBSD-CURRENT is not in any way “officially supported”.

    I thought PC-BSD was a nice, easily-set-up systemd-free desktop OS with ZFS. I've used it on older systems and it was pretty nice. No way would I use it for anything important if it's going to be tracking Current, though, and have to deal with the headache of extra bugs and instability. Even FreeBSD doesn't recommend it unless you're a tester or contributor.

    Am I missing something? What are the benefits of this move? Will the TrueOS team be able to provide support for the inevitable bugs that come up and annoy users?