How to install Opensuse 11.2 with KDE3 (From scratch)

How to install Opensuse 11.2 with KDE3 from scratch.

Today we will discuss about an new openSUSE 11.2 installation based on KDE3.
I've installed it on my laptop with an intel i810 graphic card.
I believed that for some of you, some configurations might change.

I've used virtualbox to reproduced the installation.
Some of you prefer to use live cds, but for this you will need for a DVD or a nerwork cd installation.
You need an internet connection for this installation.

Alright.

Insert the CD or DVD, and choose the installation option.

Choose minimal server selection (text mode). Do not choose Minimal X Windows as it will install xdm for you. I will show later how to install kdm and how to activate it. You can decide how many slices and placen you want by editing your partition table. We continue by choosing your own username and password.

We continue by choosing your own username and password.

Notice again that it is a system type: minimal server selection.
Then click install.

After you installation, it will continue by automaticly configure your system or you can do it manualy.
Then, you shall be able to log on on text mode.
Log as a root user.
Update and Upgrade the system by using: "zypper up" command or use Online update from yast2, then reboot the system.

After second logon as root, we need to use yast2 to configure the system.

Choose Software repositories, then enter on Add.
Optional: you can already get all the community repositories before doing the KDE3 installation.

So, for the KDE3 repo, you need to enter on specific URL (Software repo > Add> Specify URL):
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/openSUSE_11.2/

Optional: Register these repositories to be able to install later some kdebase3 software which are not available from the above repo (like amarok-packman-1.4 or kpowersave and some libraries necessary for some kde3 packages, etc.):

http://packman.mirrors.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.1/
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Community/openSUSE_11.1
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1/repo/oss/
http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.1/repo/non-oss/
Then next, and Finish, Import the keys, then voila.

Now we will install the softwares that we need to have a perfect KDE3 Desktop.

Yast2 > Software > Software Management.

Install kdebase3-sessions, kdebase3-kdm, sax2-gui, yast2-gtk, yast2-qt-graph, yast2-sound, yast2-support and optional: xorg-x11-server-extra (driver for intel card) if you have a laptop with an Intel i810 card just like me. For Nvidia or ATI drivers, I will suggest to follow these Howtos:
http://en.opensuse.org/ATI
http://en.opensuse.org/NVIDIA

Then that installation, come back on the main menu of Yast2, go to System > /etc/sysconfig editor;

Then go to Desktop > Display manager > DISPLAYMANAGER and in setting of: DISPLAYMANAGER, put KDM then finish.

Then go to System Services (Runlevel),

Then go to export mode and choose Runlevel 5 (Graphic mode) instead of 3 (text mode). Click on OK.
Exit yast2.
Run command "sax2" or "sax2 -r -m 0=xxxx" (depending of you graphic card: intel or nvidia,...) to configure your card.

Et voila, you graphic card should be confirgured by now.
Review all the configurations: packages installed, display manager, runlevel, graphic card configuration then reboot your system.

After the reboot, you shall see KDM display:

Don't worry about the theme, you can install another one by installating for the software management: kdmthemes. Log on.

As you can see there is not much of kdebase3 options within the kde menu, you will need to install them.
Relaunch software management, then go to the kde3 repositories (11.2 and 11.1), and choose your options: kdemultimedia3  and extras (don't forget kdemultimedia3-mixer for kmix for the sound control), kdenetwork3 and extras, etc, as well as kpowersave (which you can only get from the KDE 11.1 repositories) and kdmtheme (only from the kde3 community 11.1 repo), kdeutils3-laptop for multimedia keys (laptops or keyboards), etc...; as you wish.

Et voila:

Don't forget to configure your sound card and other options (depending of your system).

Alright, I think by now your pc or laptop shall be working perfectly.
I choose this option to install Opensuse KDE3 because it takes less resources than kde4 and gnome.

Njoy.

Hey Ubuntu, Stop Making Linux Look Bad

Ubuntu’s new Karmic Koala 9.10 release has been highly anticipated as the greatest release ever. In truth, it falls flat on its face in a time when Linux really needed to shine.

It’s the same old story. A new Ubuntu release, a new series of pain and frustration.
Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu every 6 months, come what may. Unfortunately what most often comes is a system full of bugs, pain, anguish, wailing and gnashing of teeth - as many “early” adopters of Karmic Koala have discovered.
The problem is, Ubuntu makes Linux look bad. As more and more people make the switch to free software this is not a good thing. Linux is meant to be stable, secure, reliable.
On the other hand, Ubuntu is obviously doing a lot right. People are indeed switching to Linux, and most of these users have come from an operating system far more torturous, but what they arrive to doesn’t have to be the way it is. Indeed, it shouldn’t be that way.
You see, “With great power comes great responsibility” and now that Ubuntu is very popular it really has a responsibility to create quality products.
As usual, some things which were broken in the previous release are now fixed, but things which were working are now broken. A friend of mine has two wireless USB devices. One works on 9.04 while the other one doesn’t, which is fair enough. With 9.10 however, the one which wasn’t working now works, but the one which was working now doesn’t. Come again? It’s not the first time either. Upgrading from 8.10 to 9.04 his TV tuner cards which used to work, then stopped.
There’s gotta be a better way to do this.
With each new release comes new features, newer software, yet somehow things go backwards. Free software is supposed to improve with each new release. Take OS X, which gets faster. Cleaner. Better. Sure, they have a much smaller hardware base to work on, but it can be done. Ubuntu with the potential for thousands of developers surely can do a better job? Or at least, surely it could at least move forward??
Perhaps Ubuntu’s success is also its curse. They came to fame by making the hard things easier and as such have done great things for the Linux desktop. When you introduce components like proprietary software however, things get more complicated. Sure, Jockey (the proprietary driver manager) warns that Ubuntu “cannot improve or fix these third party drivers,” but does the average user really know what that means? All they know is that their entire (supposedly stable) Linux box hard locks each time they log out or switch users.
Personally, upgrading a recent Jaunty install to Karmic entirely broke networking on the box. Meanwhile, a fresh Kubuntu 32bit install wouldn’t boot with a broken GRUB2 configuration and booting to the Live CD then hard locked the machine. On another machine, half-way through a fresh Ubuntu 64 bit install, the video card suddenly started to display artefacts on the screen. A power off and reboot and it’s still broken. Coincidence? Maybe.
Other people experience awesome features like broken graphics, crashing installer, misconfigured boot loader, USB drives not mounting, sound not working, broken wireless, the list goes on. Upgrading is so bad that a majority of the advice is to perform a fresh install. In fact, the entire term “early adopter” refers to the fact that most experienced Ubuntu users upgrading to the latest version will always wait at least a month before doing so, in order to ensure most major bugs are fixed. Is this seriously acceptable? Is this what you expect from a Linux system? Surely this is some kind of morbid, ironic joke.
Ubuntu is starting to make dents in the commercial arena and that’s great, but do we really need fancy new features like Ubuntu One when basic functionality (that quite frankly should be solved in the 21st century) doesn’t work as expected? Isn’t Ubuntu supposed to “Just Work”™?
Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the release notes for 9.10 and read the 40 odd bugs for this “stable” operating system:

• Boot from degraded RAID array broken
• File system corruption with so called “large files” over 512MB
• Hibernation unavailable with automatic partitioning
• Kubuntu package manager does not warn about installing from unsigned package repositories
• No USB devices work on MSI Wind netbooks, plus flickering graphics
• No Xv support for Intel graphics
• Samba nmbd daemon not started during boot
• System won’t boot with converted ext4 file system
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix missing shutdown applet
• Ubuntu One client corrupts data
• Wireless kill switch segfaults kernel
• X server crashes when using a Wacom tablet
• ..and others (plus more discovered after release).

You must be joking.
A poll on the Ubuntu forums shows just 10% of people had a flawless install. Now that’s something to be proud of! Still not convinced? Try it yourself.
They say, “What goes around comes around.” If Ubuntu doesn’t get their act together then they will be eclipsed by other distros, and rightfully so. What’s worse about all this, is that Karmic Koala had been talked up so much. “It’s a Windows 7 killer” and all that, which of course we’ve heard before. Shuttleworth boasts that he is even “looking forward” to the battle with Microsoft. In the face of Microsoft’s latest effort, just when Linux needed a knight in shining armor and a prime example of how amazing free software is we get, ah, Ubuntu. Hurrah.
Many years ago Linux was very command line focused (and still can be, thank goodness). Back then, many Windows users tried Linux and were scared off, never to try Linux again having been so deeply scarred by that initial experience. It’s happening again, except that this time many of the things which are great about Linux that are touted by the community are being destroyed. Linux is stable, it doesn’t crash. Whoops, Ubuntu just hard locked my machine. Whoops, Firefox is no longer starting up for some reason, whoops this package is now broken. Gah!
Canonical is not an open source company, they are just using free software to try and get a slice of the huge operating system market. Even so, one of Shuttleworth’s primary goals for Ubuntu is for it to be as good as OS X. With releases like Karmic Koala, they aren’t going to get there any time soon, especially when Apple is releasing excellent bug fix-only versions like Snow Leopard. Get your act together, because while Ubuntu might be gaining brave new users who have it worse on Windows, it just doesn’t cut it for experienced Linux users.
Of course these sort of issues are not limited to Ubuntu, but it certainly seems to have more than its fair share. Perhaps it’s the whole commercially driven “release on time” philosophy, or maybe there aren’t enough beta testers. Then again, Fedora has been pushing the limits more than Ubuntu recently and has introduced far more features, yet has had much more successful releases. Something is very wrong with Ubuntu’s release cycle.
Perhaps it’s just Karma, or perhaps the mascot too greatly epitomizes this release. Koalas are after all, very lazy beasts who sleep most of the time (and they don’t drink at all). Drop bears on the other hand..

Christopher Smart has been using Linux since 1999. In 2005 he created Kororaa Linux, which delivered the world's first Live CD showcasing 3D desktop effects. He also founded the MakeTheMove website, which introduces users to free software and encourages them to switch. In his spare time he enjoys writing articles on free software.

How to Watch Football TV on Linux

How to Watch International Football TV on Linux via Internet for free


Today we will discuss on how to watch International football matches ( or any other sports (basketball, cricket, etc...) on Linux via the internet.

As you might know there is many softwares on windows to do this kind of work (Tvant, ppmate, etc...).

As a heavy linux user, I was looking for a solution and I came across SopCast.

Sopcast is, like all programs, also fully free. It's one of the older programs, and it has been developed very well with alot of interesting feautures and options. It's so far the best program, besides the fact it can't handle most busy moments. It's fully English, and many other languages are available aswell.

Channels:
Alot of main channels like StarSports, ESPN, CCTV5, SHTV, Guandong, 3TV1 cable channels and many good test channels (Americain, French, British channels, etc.). Also many movie channels, series and music or stuff.

It works great with an additional VOD function. VOD = Video on Demand, think of a movie, or a serie: you can watch it at any time you want, and it will always start from the first minute on!


* How to watch?
There are 2 ways to watch:
- Start a channel from our schedule pages, you click a link and then it starts Sopcast + the channel.
- Start sopcast manually and select a channel. By clicking any channel it will open a new frame with the channel loading.


Download Sopcatst for Linux:

1. Command line Version

http://download.sopcast.cn/download/sp-auth.tgz
Please read the Readme file in this package, about the usage and library dependency.
If you need the stdc++5 library, download it here:
http://www.sopcast.com/download/libstdcpp5.tgz
Note: No need to download the libstdcpp5.tgz if you can run sp-sc.

2. GUI front-end

You can download and read more about the Linux GUI front-end here:
http://code.google.com/p/sopcast-player/
The GUI versoin is developed by Jason Scheunemann, thanks a lot!

Notes: Be aware that for the latest version (here), you will need ia32-libs which is not available for the moment under ubuntu/debian. For that issue, the only solution will be to use an old version which work great for me:
sp-auth_3.0.1_i386.deb
sopcast-player_0.3.0-0ubuntu1_i3..deb
libstdc++5_3.3.6-17ubuntu1_i386.deb (karmic user).

After installation, lauch Sopcast (Multimedia), click on Open, past a link:
by example, visit http://www.myp2p.eu/competition.php?competitionid=&part=sports&discipline=football, click on the match you are interested, copy the sopcast link, then past it and wait until buffer is finished, if not working get another link.

You shall be able to a watch a live football match now.

 Njoy

Configuring Strong Wi-fi (802.1x) Authentication in Linux

Configuring Strong Wi-fi (802.1x) Authentication in Linux

In this tutorial series, we'll first see how 802.1X authentication fits into the big picture of wireless LAN security. Then we'll configure the authentication settings in Ubuntu. Lastly, we'll review the manual configuration of 802.1X supplicants. Lets get started!

Back when the vulnerabilities of WEP encryption for Wi-Fi networks were uncovered, the IEEE and wireless industry started developing new protocols and standards. They came up with the 802.11i, a standard to finally implement a fully secure encryption mechanism for wireless LANs. Before it was completed, the Wi-Fi Alliance released the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard, loosely based on 802.11i using TKIP for the underlying encryption. Later they released WPA2, which includes full support for 802.11i using AES/CCMP encryption...

Read more.

NFS and Firewall on Centos & Red Hat

NFS and Firewall on Centos/Red Hat

Today we will talk about some trick on how to enable NFS with Firewall integrated on a Centos or Red Hat server.

Ok, I believe that you already configured a NFS server on Centos or Red hat but you have difficulties to have acces on with the firewall enabled.

This is a trick that I managed to put in place:

• Create a file "/etc/sysconfig/nfs" and add the following contents:
  

STATD_PORT=4001
LOCKD_TCPPORT=4002
LOCKD_UDPPORT=4002
MOUNTD_PORT=4003

• Append the following to the file "/etc/services":
  

rquotad 4004/tcp # rpc.rquotad tcp port
rquotad 4004/udp # rpc.rquotad udp port

•  Restart the nfs services
  

From there, open these ports -> 111:tcp, 111:udp, 2049:tcp, 2049:udp,
4001:tcp, 4001:udp, 4002:tcp, 4002:udp, 4003:tcp, 4003:udp, 4004:tcp,
4004:udp on your firewall configuration.
(you can choose any ports, just be aware that they shall be related to your NFS config).

Linux / Windows Application For Prevention Of RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury)

Linux / Windows Application For Prevention Of RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury).
by Vivek Gite

Repetitive strain injury (RSI) is occupational overuse syndrome, non-specific arm pain or work related upper limb disorder. RSI caused from overusing the hands to perform a repetitive task, such as typing, writing, or clicking a mouse. Unfortunately, most people do not understand what RSI is or how serious it can be. You can easily prevent RSI using open source software called Workrave.

What are the symptoms of RSI?

I'm quoting from this page:
Do you experience:

1. Fatigue or lack of endurance?
2. Weakness in the hands or forearms?
3. Tingling, numbness, or loss of sensation?
4. Heaviness: Do your hands feel like dead weight?
5. Clumsiness: Do you keep dropping things?
6. Lack of strength in your hands? Is it harder to open jars? Cut vegetables?
7. Lack of control or coordination?
8. Chronically cold hands?
9. Heightened awareness? Just being slightly more aware of a body part can be a clue that something is wrong.
10. Hypersensitivity?
11. Frequent self-massage (subconsciously)?
12. Sympathy pains? Do your hands hurt when someone else talks about their hand pain?

How To Reduce Your Risk Of Developing RSI

• Take breaks, when using your computer, every 30 minutes or so. Use software such as workwave to prevent RSI.
• Regular exercise can prevent all sort of injuries including RSI.
• Use good posture. Adjust your computer desk and/or chair to support muscles necessary for good posture.

Workrave

Workrave is a free open source software application intended to prevent computer users from developing RSI or myopia. The software periodically locks the screen while an animated character, "Miss Workrave", walks the user through various stretching exercises and urges them to take a coffee break. The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit. The program works under MS-Windows and Linux / UNIX operating systems.

Install workrave

Type the following command under Debian / Ubuntu Linux, enter:

sudo apt-get install workrave

Note CentOS / RHEL / Fedora Linux user can download it software and install the same using rpm command.

Configure workrave

Workrave works as an applet which is a small application whose user interface resides within a panel. You need to add workrave to panel to control behavior and appearance of the software.

Adding a New Workrave Object To Panel

• Right-click on a vacant space on a panel to open the panel popup menu.
• Choose Add to Panel.
• The Add to Panel dialog opens.The available panel objects are listed alphabetically, with launchers at the top. Select workrave applet and click on Add button.

Fig.01: Adding an Object (Workwave) to a Panel

How Do I Modify Properties Of Workrave Software?

To modify the properties of an object workrave, perform the following steps:

• Right-click on the workrave object to open the panel object popup.
• Choose Preference. Use the Properties dialog to modify the properties as required.

Fig.02: Modifying the Properties of The Workrave Software

Workwave in Action

The main window shows the time remaining until it suggests a pause. The windows can be closed and you will the time remaining on the panel itself:

Fig.03: Time reaming counter

Fig.04: Miss Workrave - an animated character walks you through various stretching exercises

The break prelude window, bugging you to take a micro-pause:

Fig.05: Time for a micro-pause remainder

Fig.06: You can skip Micro-break

Taken from that website.

Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On OpenSUSE 11.2 (LAMP)

Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On OpenSUSE 11.2 (LAMP)
By Falko Timme 

 LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on an OpenSUSE 11.2 server with PHP5 support (mod_php) and MySQL support.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!


Please find more information on that Link.

FreeBSD 8.0 Review: Enterprise Ready Server Operating System

FreeBSD 8.0 Review: Enterprise Ready Server Operating System

by Vivek Gite

The FreeBSD Project is one of the oldest and successful project. FreeBSD is well known for its reliability, robustness, and performance.
 

FreeBSD 8 has been released.Find release announcement on that link.

Jails v2

FreeBSD jails (operating system-level virtualization) are perfect for virtual hosting environments. It offers security and ability to partition a FreeBSD-based system into independent system. Jail v2 features the extensible jail parameters and hierchical jails. By setting a jail's children.max parameter, processes within a jail may be able to create jails of their own. You can also use multiple IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (added in 7.2) per jails. You can also restrict jails to certain CPUs and jail admin can create and manage their own ZFS file systems within the jails.

Listing Active FreeBSD Jails with jls and jexec commands

Improved ZFS & DTrace

FreeBSD 8 includes improved ZFS support which bringing ZFS out of the "experimental" status to "stable". Zpool format upgrade to 13 from 6 and many bugs are fixed. DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for the Solaris. It provides a powerful infrastructure that permits administrators, developers, and service personnel to concisely answer arbitrary questions about the behavior of the operating system and user programs. Also kmem_max, limit has been increased to 512 GB from 2GB.

ULE scheduler

The default scheduler is ULE:

$ sysctl kern.sched.name

Sample outputs:

kern.sched.name: ULE

The ULE scheduler provides a number of advanced scheduler features not present in bsd scheduler [sched_4bsd(4)], the traditional system scheduler. These features address SMP and interactivity and include:

1. Thread CPU affinity.
2. CPU topology awareness, including for hyper-threading.
3. Assigning individual CPUs to jails.
4. Performance improvements etc.

New USB Stack

After a long period of review and testing FreeBSD 8 will ship with Hans Peter's new usb stack:

1. A new and mutex enabled USB API.
2. Linux USB kernel compatibility layer.
3. New UGEN backend and libusb library, finally solves the "driver unloading" problem.
4. New "usbconfig" utility, for easy configuration of USB.
5. Full support for Split transactions, which means you can use your full speed USB audio device on a high speed USB HUB.
6. Full support for USB on embedded platforms, mostly cache flushing and buffer invalidating stuff.
7. Autodetect of annoying USB install disks.
8. Support for USB transfers like I/O vectors, means more throughput and less interrupts.

Get Detailed Process Information

The new procstat(8) utility displays detailed information about the running processes. This is useful for for debugging server problems. You can display the following information with procstat:

• Binary information for the process.
• Command line arguments for the process.
• File descriptor information for the process.
• The stacks of kernel threads in the process, excluding stacks of threads currently running on a CPU and threads with stacks swapped to disk.
• Security credential information for the process.
• Thread information for the process.
• Virtual memory mappings for the process.

Fig.02: procstat(8) Output

Superpages

Superpages provides good application support for quad-core and newer AMD / Intel CPUs. The FreeBSD virtual memory subsystem now supports fully transparent use of superpages (included since 7.2) for application memory. This can be enabled by setting a loader tunable vm.pmap.pg_ps_enabled to 1 and vm.pmap.pg_ps_enabled=1. By default it was turned on under FreeBSD 8.

Xen DomU Support

New experimental Xen support has been added into FreeBSD 8. It means you can use a 32-bit guest operating system on recent versions of Xen dom0. You will not able use XEN as host i.e. you can use CentOS or other Linux as host and install FreeBSD as guest. Xen HVM support can be added using the following two options and buildworld inside VM (see config(5) man page or /usr/src/sys/`uname -p`/conf/XENHVM config file):

options         XENHVM
device          xenpci

Work is also in progress to make FreeBSD 8 ready to used on Amazon EC2.

Network Stack Virtualization (VIMAGE)

The network stack virtualization project aims at extending the FreeBSD kernel to maintain multiple independent instances of networking state. This will allow for complete networking independence between jails on a system, including giving each jail its own firewall, virtual network interfaces, rate limiting, routing tables, and IPSEC configuration. The vimage is a jail with a virtualized instance of the FreeBSD network stack. It is an experimental feature. To enable VIMAGE, edit your kernel config file and add the following line:

options VIMAGE

Make sure you remove the SCTP option. Save and close the file. Rebuild the kernel:

make buildkernel KERNCONF=NIXCRAFT
make installkernel KERNCONF=NIXCRAFT
reboot

You can easily create the vimage enabled jail using jail, run:

jail -c vjail1 name=vjail1 host.hostname=vjail1.nixcraft.in path=/ persist

You can easily communicate between jails using epair driver interface which is a pair of virtual back-to-back connected Ethernet interfaces:

ifconfig epair0 create
ifconfig epair0a config-options

See jail(8), and epair(4) man page for more details.

Virtualbox (Port)

VirtualBox is an actively developed, complete virtualization package, that is available for FreeBSD. You can run MS-Windows or UNIX / Linux like guests. VirtualBox is available as a FreeBSD port in emulators/virtualbox.

Fig.03: Freebsd 8 Running Virtualbox Virtualization Software

Stack-smashing Protection (ProPolice)

The "Stack-Smashing Protector" (ProPolice SSP) is an enhancement which prevent exploits that use stack-based buffer overflows. ProPolice moves canary code generation from the back-end to the front-end of the compiler. ProPolice also protects all registers saved in function's prologue (for example the frame pointer), and not only the Return Address. ProPolice, in addition to canary protection, also sorts array variables (where possible) to the highest part of the stack frame, to make it more difficult to overflow them and corrupt other variables. It also creates copies of arguments of the function, and relocates them together with local variables, effectively protecting the arguments.

Rewritten NFS client/server Introducing NFSv4

FreeBSD 8 supports NFSv4 with ACLs, strong authentication, stateful protocol, and performance improvements. FreeBSD 8 also includes a brand new NFS Lock Manager which runs in kernel mode and uses the normal local locking infrastructure for its state.

Textdumps (debugging)

The textdump(4) facility allows the capture of kernel debugging information to disk in a human-readable rather than the machine-readable form normally used with kernel memory dumps and minidumps. This representation, while less complete in that it does not capture full kernel state, can provide debugging information in a more compact, portable, and persistent form than a traditional dump. It is recommended that you use textdumps with ddb(4).

Wireless Mesh Support

FreeBSD 8 includes IEEE 802.11s wireless mesh standard. Wireless mesh networks are expected to become widespread as routers and network appliances deploy them, allowing wireless networks to be built and extended dynamically.

gvinum Improvements

gvinum is a Logical Volume Manager for FreeBSD. It supports the following features:

1. JBOD, RAID 0 / 1 / 5
2. Create a mirror on disk
3. Volume management and much more

Other Improvements (quoting from the release notes)

1. TTY layer rewrite.
2. Multicast updates including IGMPv3.
3. Back end support for equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) for both IPv4 and IPv6.
4. FreeBSD 8 should no longer panic when you remove a USB drive without unmounting it first.
5. Boot support for GPT partitions.
6. bsdlabel now support 26 partitions.
7. The aac(4) driver now supports volumes larger than 2TB in size.
8. The top(1) command now supports a -P flag to provide per-CPU usage statistics.
9. Increased the maximum number of groups a user may belong - GROUPS_MAX and NGROUPS have been increased from 16 to 1023 and 1024 respectively.
10. FreeBSD 8 supports new Intel Nehalem / Core i7 platform.
11. OpenSSH has been updated to 5.2p1. Finally you can specifies a path to chroot(2) to after authentication using ChrootDirectory directive.
12. FreeBSD 8 bundles lots of software via ports including Firefox 3.5.5, Gnome gnome2-2.26,kde4-4.3.1, gimp 2.6.6, and much more. FreeBSD desktop is feature rich and perfect for software development and/or network / sys admin purpose.
13. The awk(1) utility now supports 64 files. The upper limit was 20 in the prior releases.
14. BIND has been updated to version 9.6.1rc1.
15. OpenBSM 1.1 from Trusted BSD Project has been merged.

Conclusion

This release improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.2 and introduces often requested new features in jail, SMP-optimized scheduler, virtualization, virtual network stack, NFS4, and storage subsystem improvements. This the most impressive FreeBSD releases to date. Kudos to FreeBSD team for rolling out stable and feature rich enterprise ready FreeBSD 8 operating systems.

For more details about the release, refer to the official announcement on the FreeBSD mailing list (yet to announce). You can download the installation images from the FreeBSD mirrors (main FTP site) or via BitTorrent.

In the meantime, I'm testing and deploying a few FreeBSD 8 boxes with virtual network stack and Jail v2 features, stay tuned for updates.