Trying VirtualBSD 8.1

Reece Tarbert sent an email announcing the availability of VirtualBSD 8.1, a version of FreeBSD 8.1 aimed at demonstrating FreeBSD on the desktop. It's a 1.3 GB zipped VMWare image that expands to 4.1 GB.

I downloaded the image via Bittorrent, expanded the image, and then used the VMWare Converter to transfer the VM from my laptop to my ESXi server. I accepted all the defaults and successfully converted the VM. However, after booting the VM I noticed the kernel did not recognize the network card. I shut down the VM, removed the NIC, and added a new e1000 NIC. After booting that version the VM recognized the NIC and got an IP address via DHCP from my Cisco 3750 switch.

One of my definitions of "desktop ready" is whether I can see YouTube videos out-of-the-box. As the screen capture shows, VirtualBSD worked without incident.

If you're wondering about PC-BSD, I plan to give version 8.2 a try soon. As I Tweeted last month, I had trouble with the installer and couldn't install 8.1 to my ESXi server. I could try installing to VMWare Workstation and then converting that VM too.
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