After announcing the first release candidate (RC1) of the FreeBSD 8.1 two weeks ago, today the FreeBSD Project announced the availability of FreeBSD 8.1-RC2. This is most likely final Release Candidate for the FreeBSD 8.1 release cycle available for amd64, i386, ia64, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures.

The RC2 should fix a problem related to Atheros AR9280 cards being detected incorrectly making them unusable.  Testing of this fix would be appreciated.

According to the release announcement DVD images are not available at present because there was a fairly serious security issue with the png graphics package. Don’t worry they will generate DVD images when the rebuilt packages become available, that will be announced then the images are ready.

About FreeBSD

FreeBSD® is an advanced operating system for modern server, desktop, and embedded computer platforms. FreeBSD’s code base has undergone over thirty years of continuous development, improvement, and optimization. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. FreeBSD provides advanced networking, impressive security features, and world class performance and is used by some of the world’s busiest web sites and most pervasive embedded networking and storage devices.