iXsystems Announces PC-BSD 10: Propelling the BSD Desktop Experience to New Heights
San Jose, CA (PRWEB) January 30, 2014 -- iXsystems, Inc. is delighted to announce the release of PC-BSD 10: Joule Edition! This major new version of the PC-BSD desktop operating system brings in a wide variety of improvements to both its own tools and software from the wider open source community. Most users will notice the replacement of GNOME 2 with MATE, as well as the revamped Life Preserver backup utility that makes use of ZFS replication. The underlying operating system has been updated to FreeBSD 10, which brings in many performance and driver improvements, including updated AMD video drivers.
The largest change since PC-BSD 9 is the replacement of GNOME 2 with its successor desktop, MATE. MATE is a fork of GNOME 2 that seeks to preserve the traditional desktop metaphor. GNOME 3 and Cinnamon are also available as unsupported desktops - GNOME 3 is the latest desktop from the GNOME project, and Cinnamon provides a variant on the GNOME desktop experience from Linux Mint. With these additions and the latest versions of XFCE, LXDE, and KDE, PC-BSD offers a complete array of modern desktop environments for users to choose from.
PC-BSD provides an incredible array of custom tools and utilities, and most of them have been improved with this release. The biggest change is to the PC-BSD Life Preserver, which now operates via ZFS snapshots and offers the ability to quickly retrieve files from previous versions of the filesystem. Your entire disk of data can also be automatically replicated to a remote system using the same ZFS revision, such as FreeBSD 10 or FreeNAS 9.2. Should your existing disk drive crash, it is possible to recover directly from the remote replication using the PC-BSD DVD/USB installer. A new disk management tool for managing ZFS volumes after installation has also been added in this release as well as a new Qt based graphical login manager (PCDM), replacing the legacy GDM login manager.
The PC-BSD installation process has been improved as well. There is now a single file to download, which can be used for either a USB or DVD installation. The installer now offers a choice of graphical or text mode, making it just as easy to use for server installation as for desktops. The installer now offers GRUB as the recommended bootloader, with support for ZFS boot environments. This allows users to backup the entire boot environment of PC-BSD before attempting upgrades or hazardous operations, and boot back into them later if something goes wrong.
Joe Maloney, an Assistant Network Administrator with Sumner Communications who runs pkgdemon.com and recently joined the PC-BSD project as a volunteer developer, told iXsystems about his experience using PC-BSD at his day job. “Currently four out of five of us in our Internet Technical Support Department use PC-BSD. Recently I've implemented EasyPBI to create installers for our work applications. I run PC-BSD 10; I’d say each release keeps getting better and better. My favorite PC-BSD features are Ports Jail, the Warden, and ZFS support for RAID-Z, snapshots, and rollbacks.”
About PC-BSD®
PC-BSD is a fully functional, user-friendly desktop operating system based on FreeBSD. It runs on the latest FreeBSD version with a desktop interface of the user's choice and is installed with a graphical or text interface. Its PBI system, originally developed for PC-BSD and also available on FreeBSD, maintains package dependencies in an efficient format that eliminates conflicts and conserves disk space.
About iXsystems®
iXsystems is the industry leader in Open-Source-friendly enterprise servers and storage solutions. All of our products are assembled, tested, and shipped from company headquarters in Silicon Valley, and technical support is provided in-house by the same engineers that build the systems. Thousands of companies, universities, and U.S. Government departments have come to rely on iXsystems' customer-first commitment to excellence. iXsystems champions the cause of Open Source technology by dedicating extensive resources to several FreeBSD community projects: FreeNAS®, PC-BSD®, FreeBSD®, TrueOS®, and OpenZFS.
Denise Ebery, iXsystems, Inc., +1 4089434100 Ext: 120, [email protected]
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