FreeBSD 7.3 released

The FreeBSD developers have announced the availability of version 7.3 of their popular free Unix derivative. The fourth release from the 7-STABLE branch includes a number of changes and introduces several new features.

In addition to the usual bug fixes, FreeBSD 7.3 features version 13 of the ZFS file system, the addition of the alc(4) driver for Atheros AR8131/AR8132 PCIe Ethernet controller and a new boot loader (gptzfsboot) that supports GPT and ZFS. Supported versions of the desktop environments include version 2.28.2 of GNOME and KDE 4.3.5.

Other updates include version 9.4-ESV of the ISC BIND Domain Name System (DNS) server, Perl 5.10 and Sendmail 8.14.4. The developers note that there will be one more release from this branch, however, they also point out that most of the developers are currently focused on 8-STABLE.

More details about the release can be found in the release notes and errata. FreeBSD 7.3 is available to download for x86 and x64 processors and IA64, PC98, PowerPC and SPARC64 platforms. Users currently running FreeBSD 7.0 or later can upgrade via the freebsd-update utility. An installation guide is also provided.

See also:

• PC-BSD 8.0 "Hubble Edition" arrives, a report from The H.
• Health Check: FreeBSD, a feature from The H.
• FreeBSD 8.0 released, a report from The H.

(crve)