Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

FreeBSD 6.0 to target wireless devices

Filed under
BSD

FreeBSD developer Scott Long said on Thursday that the next version of the open-source BSD-based operating system, planned for release in September, includes support for "a lot more" wireless cards and for wireless security standards such as the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).

"One of the primary reasons for improving wireless support is to give companies the tools to put FreeBSD into their wireless devices. The guy at FreeBSD who is adding wireless support is under contract from wireless companies to do the work," said Long.

Wireless-device manufacturers may prefer to use FreeBSD rather than the rival open-source operating system, Linux, because of features such as its support for fine-grained access controls and security policies, according to Long.

Although version 6.0 will include additional wireless functionality that is useful for manufacturers, there are still a few features missing. For example, mesh network functionality, which allows data to reconfigure around blocked paths by "hopping" from node to node until a connection can be established, is still under testing and development. "We don't feel it's solid enough to be put in 6.0," said Long.

The improved wireless support will also be useful for people who want to use FreeBSD on their desktop or laptop.

FreeBSD 6.0 also includes an improvement to the file system. "We have done a lot of performance work on the file system so storage applications and databases should work faster," said Long.

Developers were initially hoping to release FreeBSD 6.0 by the end of August, but it has been delayed another month to ensure that the final release is as stable as possible, according to Long. The first beta of 6.0 was released on July 15, and a second beta was release on August 5. Long said another beta will be released next week, with the final version planned for "mid- to late" September.

The project will also launch a redesigned Web site in conjunction with its 6.0 release.

Over the summer FreeBSD has benefited from Google's Summer Code program, which sponsors students who work with open-source organizations. Eighteen students are working on various FreeBSD projects, which include improvements to the file system and work on a new installer. "Our current installer is practically as old as FreeBSD itself, and it shows," said Long.

By Ingrid Marson
ZDNet UK

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.