PC-BSD, which is FreeBSD 6 with KDE 3.5 and a GUI package management system, is now at version 1.0. I can only describe it as the way a BSD should be packaged.
Some relative stats on how platforms are doing with pkgsrc; results found in recent entries to the pkgsrc-bulk mailing list.
NetBSD 3.0_STABLE/i386 96%
NetBSD 3.99.18/i386 94%
NetBSD 2.1/i386 92%
NetBSD 1.6.2/i386 92%
DragonFly/i386 90%
NetBSD 3.0/x86_64 87%
NetBSD 2.1/sparc 82%
Darwin 8.5.0/powerpc 60%
IRIX64 6.5/mipseb 31%
DragonFly appears to be the best place to run pkgsrc, if you aren't running NetBSD.
One of the design goals for DragonFly is creating a BSD with clean, clear code. Here's one example.
Matthew Dillon would like feedback and perhaps even testing on his BUF/BIO separation patch.
Oliver Fromme noticed that the cheap DVD sold at Lehmanns for LinuxTag 2006 now contains FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD - and DragonFly.
Matthew Dillon has removed libcr, since libc_r now links correctly against libc, and libcr is no longer needed.
2 weeks until BSDCan! I won't be able to make it, but there will be a few DragonFly people up there...
pkgsrc has reached 6,000 total packages. How many of those build on DragonFly? About 93%. For comparison, pkgsrc builds about 97% of all packages on NetBSD 3.0_STABLE, which is possibly the most common platform using pkgsrc. That's fantastic statistics.
Joerg Sonnenberger followed up on the pkgsrc bug reports, noting that checking recent bulk builds (via the pkgsrc-bulk mailing list) is another way to check up on pkgsrc problems.
If you've ever been curious about how to report DragonFly issues to people outside of DragonFly; here's the process. (DragonFly mailing lists are also a good alternative.)
One of the issues with pkgsrc is that it is difficult to upgrade all packages with minimal downtime. However, as long as you are sticking to prebuilt binaries, it's possible to get it to happen rather quickly.
Colin Percival is looking for donations to support his work over the summer handling security issues for FreeBSD, Portsnap, and FreeBSD Update. He's very close to meeting the goal.
Matthew Dillon has removed lockmgr()'s interlock, which apparently has diverged in form between the different BSDs over the years.
With some final changes, version 1.4.4 is available now. This is the recommended download/update for everyone. (Including me, so I'll have to update tonight.)
Jeffrey Hsu has fixed a bridging security issue first seen in NetBSD.
If you've got an hour or two, check out the many organizations participating in the Google Summer of Code. The idea lists have a lot of neat material.
This week on UnixReview.com has a lot more content than usual:
Examining the Updated Security+ Certification - Part One, Shell Corner: Graphing Perl's Regular Expressions,
Security: Unpatched and Doing Fine?,
and the book reviews Migrating to IPv6 and Cryptography in the Database
Matthew Dillon's merged a heap of bugfixes from the current code back into the 1.4 release branch; the update to 1.4.4 won't happen until Friday, however.