[PC-BSD Testing] Alpha 8.0-12062009 is available!

[Kris Moore]

Hey everybody, sorry for such a long period between alphas, but 
hopefully it'll be worth it :)

I've just finished uploading alpha 12062009 DVD's to the ftp site:

ftp://ftp.pcbsd.org/pub/alpha-iso/

Here's some of the notable changes:

* FreeBSD 8.0-Release
* Nvidia 195.22 drivers for both 32 / 64bit
* KDE 4.3.4
* Brand new SysInstaller
  - New look n' feel
  - New backend, much more powerful, scriptable, etc
  - Support for a wider variety of file-system layouts
  - Ability to change / try different keyboard layouts
  - Install either PC-BSD or FreeBSD from the same disk
  - Using glabel on file-systems to prevent issues with device renaming
  (BTW - Special thanks to Ken Kasina for working so hard on the new 
SysInstaller UI! )
* Improved splash graphics, theme data (Thanks James!)
* Fixed KDE printer tool in system settings
* Added new tool "System -> Life Preserver", which allows backing up the 
system to a remote ssh + rsync system

With this alpha, we are about to the point of being "feature-complete" 
for 8.0, and I'm looking to moving us to a public beta release in the 
next week or two. So lets make good use of the time, and try to find / 
fix as many bugs as possible. Remember to be specific with your report 
:) Once we go to beta, we'll start offering the USB / CD image, along 
with network install support.

NOTES:

This is the first public release using our new System Installer backend 
& frontend, so I'm expecting to run into bugs since we only have a 
limited number of systems on which to test it. Should you run into a 
failure during the install, please take the following steps so I can 
resolve it:

1. Right click on the desktop and open "xterm"
2. Tail the file /tmp/.pc-sysinstall/pc-sysinstall.log, and send me that 
info for debugging
3. Also send a copy of /tmp/sys-install.cfg if possible, so I can see 
how you attempted to setup your system


KNOWN BUGS:

After installation the /etc/fstab file isn't tabbed properly, will be 
fixing this soon

PBIs for PC-BSD 7.x may not fully uninstall properly right now, please 
try to only install
PBIs built for 8.x from the following sites:

http://pbibuild64.pcbsd.org/index.php?ver=8   <- 64bit
http://pbibuild.pcbsd.org/index.php?ver=8   <- 32bit

-- 

Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software
http://www.pcbsd.com