PC-BSD 11.0 is also in heavy development

May 2, 2015 23:35 GMT  ·  By

While not a Linux kernel-based operating system, PC-BSD is one of the coolest and user-friendly BSD distributions around. The latest version, 10.1.2, is in the works, and PC-BSD development has team just announced that the first Release Candidate (RC) version is now available for download and testing.

According to the release notes, PC-BSD 10.1.2 will introduce some attractive new features and improvements that will make the FreeBSD-based operating system more reliable and stable than ever, despite the fact that that this version is considered a maintenance release.

Highlights of PC-BSD 10.1.2 include Lumina Desktop 0.8.4, Online Updater improvements, GRUB nested menus for boot-environments, new HTML handbook, support for encrypted iSCSI backups via Life-Preserver, sound configuration support via the first-boot utility, and support for bare-metal restores via the installation media.

"The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the availability of RC1 images for the upcoming quarterly 10.1.2 release" was stated in the official release announcement of PC-BSD 10.1.2 RC1. "Users currently running the EDGE package repo can now update their packages via the updater GUI or “pc-updatemanager” utility to be brought up to date with RC1."

PC-BSD 10.1.2 includes numerous other new features and updated apps

There are numerous other new features in PC-BSD 10.1.2 RC1, such as a new PersonaCrypt utility that lets users move their Home directories to an encrypted USB flash drive, Kodi and Plex Home Theater supports, new AppCafe interface, addition of OpenNTPD instead of NTP, transparent proxy support in the TOR mode, LibreSSL support, and VIMAGE support via IPFW firewall.

Among the updated applications in PC-BSD 10.1.2 RC1, we can mention the Mozilla Firefox 37.0.2 and Chromium 42.0.2311.90 web browsers, Nvidia video driver 346.47, and Pkg 1.5.1 package manager. You can download PC-BSD 10.1.2 RC1 right now from Softpedia, but please keep in mind that this is a pre-release version that might contain unresolved issues. Thus, we do not recommend installing it on production machines.