The Q2 2020 images are not a visible leap forward but a functional leap forward. Most effort was spent creating a better out of box experience for automatic Ethernet configuration, working WiFi, webcam, and improved hypervisor support.

The images can be downloaded from SourceForge:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/furybsd/files/

Highlights:

• FreeBSD 12.1-p3
• Xorg 1.2.0 with udev enabled by default
  • Enables xf86-input-libinput the wayland ready replacement for xf86-input-keyboard, and xf86-input-mouse, xf86-input-synaptics
  • Enables xf86-input-evdev which superceeded by libinput but needed for some tablet devices used by kvm, bhyve which have issues with libinput
  • Removes support for nvidia-driver-304
  • Added sysctl for pointer devices to use evdev
• Improved support for numerous hypervisors
  • Guest additions for VirtualBox now detected and enabled by default
    • Mouse leaves window without keybindings
    • Proper resolution is set
  • Guest additions for VMware now detected and enabled by default
    • Mouse leaves window without keybindings
    • Proper resolution is set
  • Improved support for KVM
    • The qxl display driver is now automatically configured
    • The tablet driver now works for proper mouse coordination
      • Make sure to enable tablet device when configuring VM
  • Improved support for bhyve
    • The tablet driver now works for proper mouse coordination
      • Make sure to enable xhci_tablet
  • Improved support for XCP-NG
    • Cirrus video driver is now automatically configured when detected
• Introducing FuryBSD Wifi Tool
  • Added wifi tool to allow user to select and configure detected wifi devices
    • This launches wpa_gui for user with the selected device when there are multiple wifi devices
    • DHCPCD will detect that a new connection has been established and automatically obtain IPv4, and IPv6 addresses
• Updates to FuryBSD Xorg Tool
  • Removed nvidia-driver-304 which is no longer supported by Xorg 1.2.0
• Improved out of box networking
  • Enabled dhcpcd for all adapters by default
    • IPv4 and IPv6 addressing is now automatic for any ethernet interface which is connected
• Enabled some default hardening which FreeBSD’s installer makes optional
  • Hide processes running as other users
  • Hide processes running as other groups
  • Disable reading kernel message buffer for unprivileged users
  • Disable processing debugging facilities for unprivileged users
  • Randomize the PID of newly created processes
  • Insert stack guard page ahead of the growable segments
  • Clean the /tmp filesystem on system startup
  • Disable opening Syslogd network socket (Disables remote logging)
  • Disable Sendmail service
• Added lib32 distribution to enable support for 32-bit applications
  • Enables support for wine and other essential desktop applications that are 32-bit only
• Introduced /opt to filesystem hierarchy for current and all future FuryBSD specific helper tools
  • Most end users should not notice this change
    • This is a design detail for where FuryBSD will install future helper applications instead of relying on ports
• Added power manager for XFCE
  • Disabled lock screen and power manager for XFCE live session
• Enabled support for webcams with webcamd
  • Users must add themselves to webcamd group as described in the installation handbook to use a connected webcam.
  • Added webcamoid for testing webcam
• Large rework of build system to use poudriere image
  • Most users will not notice but this change was made for increased efficiency to avoid a lot of duplicated effort, and reinventing the wheel
  • This change also allows building on GhostBSD or other derivatives without being intrusive to the installed system

For the rest of the changelog please see the 2020-Q2 github milestone:

https://github.com/furybsd/furybsd-livecd/milestone/2?closed=1

This new release is now based on FreeBSD 12.1 with the latest FreeBSD quarterly packages. This brings XFCE up to 4.14, and KDE up to 5.17. In addition to updates this new ISO mostly addresses community bugs, community enhancement requests, and community pull requests. Due to the overwhelming amount of reports with GitHub hosting all new releases are now being pushed to SourceForge only for the time being. Previous releases will still be kept for archive purposes.

Changelog:

• Cleanup leftover union dir after install to disk (Cleanup)
• Make sure furybsd-xorg-tool installs the right version for nvidia-driver-390 enhancement (Bugfix)
• Add nvidia-driver (latest) category to fury-xorg-tool enhancement (Enhancement)
• Restore beastie menu and default timeout on live media enhancement (Request came in from the forum in the form of confusion due lack of single user mode and other options)
• Add updating documentation (Enhancement)
• Update packages on ISO to FreeBSD quarterly branch branches/2020Q1 (Latest quarterly packages same as FreeBSD)
• Make root mount read write on live image (Cleanup)
• Update ISO to 12.1 (Latest FreeBSD 12.1-p2)
• Use dsbdriverd package from quarterly repos (Cleanup, now that authors fixes are in we no longer need custom port)
• Add xkbmap to common packages (Community PR)
• Disable console beep enhancement (Request came from Telegram, and everyone agreed no one likes the beeps)
• XFCE missing volume mixer and some other plugins enhancement (Request came from GitHub)
• Request for feature: add FreeBSD patchsets to ISO enhancement (This is how we are now able to provide 12.1-p2 on the ISO instead of 12.1-RELEASE, now you no longer have to run freebsd-update after installing)

See SourceForge for downloads:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/furybsd/files/
Existing users should see the updating section of the FuryBSD handbook to upgrade the underlying FreeBSD OS and it’s packages:
https://github.com/furybsd/furybsd-handbook/wiki/Updating-FuryBSD

The KDE plasma flavor may be downloaded from SourceForge.

A new image is also available for XFCE from GitHub.

Notable improvements include most firmware, and drivers for wireless devices being autoloaded now.  For the full list see the release notes from GitHub.

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to update FuryBSD and are proud to say a new version of FuryBSD 12.0 has been released! We’ve pulled in some essential packages for XFCE to create a better out of box experience and have included a slew of new fixes to streamline installs and provide better performance. We’ve also added experimental support for KDE and Gnome. For more information check out the release notes below or click here to download the latest .iso image from GitHub.

Fixes and Improvements From Last Image:

• Fixed bug in the previous image that prevented restore from saving live session changes
• Added ports for wallpapers, xfce-settings
• Enabled FuryBSD wallpaper for live sessions and every new user
• Added missing Nvidia xorg.conf sample mentioned in Getting Started.txt

Note different editions KDE, Gnome will each have alternate artwork.

Fixes and Improvements From original 12.0 images:

• Switched to UnionFS for full read write support so packages can now be installed during live session.
• Disabled clear_tmp service to prevent 20MB /tmp, and /var filesystem which is too small.
• Tuned ZFS arc max to 40MB during live session only to prevent install from running system out of memory.
• Dump & Restore now enables changes made in LiveCD to persist after install.
• Switched to LightDM GTK greeter for XFCE image to save a small fraction of space.
• Added dialog to warn users to add themselves to wheel group during install.
• Added experimental support for Gnome + KDE to the build system but more work needed before images can be published.
• Added essential packages such as xauth, xinit to common area for all images.
• Added dsbdriverd from NomadBSD project to common area for all images. This will load modules for detected hardware as defined in it’s database such as wifi.
• Added essential packages to XFCE for printscreen, lock screen, screensaver.
• Updated and improved desktop readme now called “Getting Started.txt” with more examples.
• Added desktop shortcut to bsdconfig.

Known issues:

• Possibly setting hostname in bsdconfig hangs the ISO (don’t do this for now, do it in the installer)
• A community member reported the fact that drm-next packages are not working with 12.1-RELEASE quarterly packages yet until the FreeBSD project addresses this. For now, 12.0 images will continue to be the default until sometime early 2020.

FuryBSD-12.0-XFCE-10-28-2019-01 has been uploaded. See releases page for details, or Download Now to get the image.

FuryBSD preview uploaded for testing.

See releases page for more details, or Download Now link above to get the image.

KnoxBUG welcomes Joe Maloney this month to talk about his new project FuryBSD!

http://knoxbug.org/content/joe-maloney-introducing-furybsd-desktop-os-made-freebsd