Changes Ahead for FreeBSD LiveCDs

There's plenty of activity in FreeBSD-land these days. Colin Percival has become the new FreeBSD Security Officer. FreeBSD 6.0-BETA3 is available, and we might see 6.0-RELEASE by late September.

I just learned of a new FreeBSD LiveCD by Matt Olander called BSDLive, which fits on a business card CD (media sleeve available). This is a great advocacy item. I booted the .iso in VMWare and saw it runs FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE-p6. It boots into X.org 6.8.2.

I will be glad when the results of the logo contest are announced!

One cannot talk about FreeBSD LiveCDs without mentioning FreeSBIE. Unfortunately, the last official release happened in December. Sguil 0.5.3 is only one day younger! However, a look at the FreeSBIE mailing list shows that Dario Freni is busy working on integrating FreeSBIE into the main FreeBSD source tree. I do not think we will see this in 6.0, but perhaps 6-STABLE will have it shortly after 6.0.

Frenzy is an alternative FreeBSD LiveCD that I have not yet tried. Frenzy 0.3 is based on FreeBSD 5.2.1 (fairly old), but a version using 5.4 appears to be available soon.

I look forward to seeing FreeSBIE integrated into the source tree, as that will undoubtedly make it easier to create FreeBSD LiveCDs.