FreeBSD 9.1 beta 1 has been released

Although a bit behind the schedule, Ken Smith today announced the first beta version of FreeBSD 9.1, the upcoming release of the project's stable branch: "The first test build of the 9.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for amd64, i386, powerpc64, and sparc64. We hope this will be the only BETA build, to be followed by two Release Candidate builds and then the release itself. If you notice any problems you can report them through the normal Gnats PR system or here on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use csup/cvsup mechanisms to do a source-based update of an existing system the branch tag to use is 'RELENG_9'. If you would like to use SVN instead use 'stable/9'. Note that if you do an update that way the system will call itself '9.1-PRERELEASE'."

FreeBSD is a UNIX-like operating system for the i386, amd64, IA-64, arm, MIPS, powerpc, ppc64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's "4.4BSD-Lite" release, with some "4.4BSD-Lite2" enhancements. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's "Net/2" to the i386, known as "386BSD", though very little of the 386BSD code remains. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. FreeBSD comes with over 20,000 packages (pre-compiled software that is bundled for easy installation), covering a wide range of areas: from server software, databases and web servers, to desktop software, games, web browsers and business software - all free and easy to install.