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PC-BSD 0.5a Beta: BSD For Dummies

Posted by timothy on from the deleetifying dept.

linuxbeta writes "PC-BSD 0.5a beta has now been released! You can download the 670Mb ISO file from our download page. This version fixes some minor bugs, and now has fully automatic network support. Screenshots available." So what's it all about? From the PC-BSD FAQ: "This OS has as its goals to be user-friendly, especially in the area of software installation and management, something that many of the *nix based distros have not yet mastered."

3 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I question the motive behind "User Friendly" by SirCyn · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes. I admit that Darwin is a good example of a BSD based OS as a Desktop OS. But there have been many, and fairly extensive, changes to the base. Darwin may owe it's roots and much code to the BSDs, but it is not a direct derivative like this PC-BSD is. The PC-BSD is the same as FreeBSD plus a graphical installer and KDE packaged in. I have not used it yet, so there may be other diferences. From the website it seems there isn't much else.

    --
    FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
  2. Hmmm.... by coyote4til7 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The philosophy is interesting. It's also the first instance of something that sounds cheesey but I'd love to tack on to XP when I tortured with that: The Eye Candy Meter

    But, the question is what's it for? The key thing seems to be a great sense of integration, etc. But, as far as I can tell, most of the things that someone who wants a *nix with a gui are not there. I may have missed some included alternatives, but you'll do without:

    • abiword/openoffice/gnumeric/koffice
    • firefox/mozilla (it does seem to have Konqueror)
    • mplayer
    • apache/php/postgresql/mysql
    • quanta
    • gimp
    • emacs

    Ouch! I suspect you won't be using this to do office, web or database work for now. Complete package list/release notes here

    --

    the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
  3. Re:Under GPL by archen · · Score: 3, Informative

    The BSDs do use GPL code, gcc being one of many examples. For the most part, it's the installer we're probably talking about here, thus not part of the base system, so it's probably not so much of an issue if one of the BSDs decided to adopt it.

    Not sure if I would want this sort of installation or not, but I think that the BSD projects could benefit from easier installations. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it now, but it could be made a bit easier. Right now I'd say the future of BSD installation is the DragonFly installer.