The next major release of FreeBSD, version 8, will probably be an “evolutional” release. The focus will be on further improvements of SMP capabilities and the stability of already implemented subsystems. This page will document changes that will be included in FreeBSD 8, including those that might end up being committed to earlier branches (i.e. it describes differences between 7.0 and 8.0).

Also useful are the quarterly Status Reports:

• 2007 / Q3

Everyone’s encouraged to download a snapshot CD image and try all the new features (as well as the old ones). Developers are very interested in bug reports. Note that FreeBSD 8.0 is not released yet.

If you’re interested in how FreeBSD gets developed, you’re encouraged to read the mailing lists and developer blogs.

Storage subsystems’ improvements

Boot support for GPT partitions

Status: Committed to -CURRENT
Will appear in 8.0: sure
Author: John Baldwin
Web: commit message

Support for booting from GPT partitions has been committed to -CURRENT. This support includes the boot sector and loader that enable common i386 machines with a generic BIOS to boot from GPT-partitioned drives.

Kernel & low level improvements

Kernel threads

Status: Committed to -CURRENT
Will appear in 8.0: sure
Author: Julian Elischer
Web: commit message

Kernel threads upto now were actually “heavy weight” processes running in the kernel address space. This change introduces real light weight kernel threads which consume less low-level resources (process locks, memory maps). It also allows better grouping of threads for display purposes.

More info is in here What’s cooking for FreeBSD 8? by Ivan Voras who is a FreeBSD committer