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Another Step Towards BSD on the Desktop
linuxbeta writes "DesktopBSD is the latest easy to install BSD aimed squarely at the desktop. Installation screen shots. From their site: 'DesktopBSD aims at being a stable and powerful operating system for desktop users. DesktopBSD combines the stability of FreeBSD, the usability and functionality of KDE and the simplicity of specially developed software to provide a system that's easy to use and install.' DesktopBSD joins the ranks of PC-BSD and FreeSBIE."
Could someone point me to (or post) a lowdown on the potential benefits of BSD has over linux (or vice versa) that doesn't include wild speculation and unfounded cynicism?
Isn't a BSD distro going to be about the same as a Linux distro? Does the kernel make that big of a difference?
Note the question marks. I am asking.
Here's to hoping there's a LiveCD version. So far, the only LiveCD that recognizes my wireless card (Broadcom in an HP laptop) is Simply Mepis.
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I am open to trying new technologies and I wouldn't mind playing with the new mac os. However I need some more convinceing to go after an opensource BSD distro. I think I'd rather try other flavors of linux before taking BSD for a spin, we all know there's plenty to choose from.
Screenshots are great, but only when they're relevant.
... and I knew that before I looked at the screenshots.
;)
People who are keen enough to be interested in BSD will already know what KDE looks like. It would be far more instructive to show screenshots of things that are unique to this particular distribution of BSD. How about showing the GUI tool for software installation, or samba configuration, or something.
All I know now is that BSD runs KDE
I like the KDE background, though
It would also help if we worked harder on well-defined and standardized APIs, so that it would be easier to get things working with each other. For example, a standardized hardware configuration API would help make "control center" type apps a lot easier to make, etc.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, the kernel doesn't make that big of a difference, and the kernel is all that linux is. BSDs are complete operating systems. The reason I don't use linux is because every distro comes with a messy userland full of random assorted crap from various sources, and most of the core utilities are bloated, poorly documented GNU junk.
The BSDs have sane, useful, documented and functional userlands, which makes them a joy to use. There is no reason that linux distros couldn't be made with a nice userland too, but nobody seems to have done it. It seems like most linux users have never used a nice unix system, so they don't realize what they are missing.
Mike walked away and never looked back. He wrote about the many problems responsible for the terminal postion which FreeBSD now finds itself. Read below, where Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD. It is a real eye-opener, and cuts to the truth (unlike a lot of the fanboy fluff which Slashdot normally publishes):
Funny, when I'm booting Windows, I often find myself wishing it was more like *nix in booting, so I could actually, you know, *see* whatever the hell it does while booting up. Make slow bootups and breakages that bit easier to debug. Given that it's about the most fragile time in any OS, I like a bit of commentary.
Well I know you're opening up the whole KDE vs. GNOME can of worms, but I don't think you're a troll. I think it's actually worth discussing again, and again, and again... :)
Anyway, I'd tend to disagree with you. I think right now GNOME is the better of the two, however I would have agreed with you last year.
Basically as it stands, all the best apps are GTK apps. If you want to run a fully native desktop, you're only gonna do that in GNOME. Whenever I use KDE, I find myself enjoying it as a desktop, but hating it as a toolkit. And I always find myself running GTK apps, like Firefox, GAIM, X-chat, Evolution/Thunderbird, the list goes on.
Now I do like a lot of QT apps. I personally think Konqueror is very nice, even though I hate the defaults. I also *love* k3b and some of the smaller KDE apps like kdf.
That said, neither is perfect. But I think GNOME is improving faster than KDE. KDE is bloated, it has poor defaults, and QT is uglier than GTK (QT has too many borders! too many borders!). And GNOME is too lacking in features. Well, each release of GNOME goes a long way towards solving its features problem. Each release of KDE does little to solve its bloat, poor defaults, and ugly QT.
Given that GNOME is cleaner, better looking, better defaults, is constantly tackling its weak spots, and most good apps are GTK, I can easily see why most distros push GNOME.
But again, it's all personal preference. Both GNOME and KDE are fantastic projects and I wish distros didn't push one or the other but supported them equally. I use Fedora and personally I think Fedora's KDE support is excellent even though it defaults to GNOME.
Anyway, I'll get back to coding in Kate and chatting on GAIM whilst browsing with Firefox in GNOME while burning a dvd with k3b... Unix desktops are not as simple as one DE, one toolkit, one kernel.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Linux is just a kernel, this isn't my opinion, its a fact. How did you want me to back that up exactly? The userland included with every linux distro I know of come from a variety of authors, have far too many useless options, have outdated, incomplete or non-existant documentation in a variety of formats, and have nothing in common besides being lumped into a distro. If that's not "random assorted crap" I don't know what is.
If you don't know wether or not something is true, find out. Me saying its true in more words isn't going to change anything, learn to think for yourself. Its not hard to install a BSD and check out how EVERYTHING has an accurate and up to date man page. How man pages not being clear enough is considered a bug and is fixed. How the same group of people are responsable for the entire OS, and ensure consistant and sane behaviour from all userland tools. Compare it to your linux distro of choice, its not hard to see the difference.
but unfortunately it allows people to not 'share back' the stuff they took and improved.
Calm down people, its a religion not an operating system.
Apple began to "come along and revolutionise the desktop environment" before Linux was a spark in Linus' eye. Almost all the technology that is MacOS X was either in the classic Mac operating systems or (for the majority) in NeXTSTEP back in the late 1980s. They just jazzed up its look a bit and switched parts of the kernel. It took NeXTSTEP over a decade to get to the stage it (as MacOS X) was in in 2001. Why should you expect a much more poorly-funded group of programmers to do the same in half that time?
GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and other similar operating systems, however, have been designed with a different userbase in mind. Clearly, they excel in that domain. More recently (beginning after your six-years-ago date), desktop environments have either attempted either to court a different userbase (e.g. Gnome) or they have become so good that they are able to be attractive to that different userbase (e.g. KDE). Considering where they came from, and where we've suddenly expected them to go, Free desktops have made outstanding progress.
Aside from that, there will be no 'year of desktop Linux'. It will just be that over time, a relatively large proportion of non-geeks will come to use Free desktops.
Look out!
Come on! The desktop is alredy here, both GNOME and KDE are very usable, and in some points better than Windows.
The problem is how to integrate them to the underlying OS! Until recently there was no standart way to do it, every distro implemented its own hardware discovery scheme.
Now we got udev, pmount, hal and others to help. Have you tried a modern desktop targeted distro recently, like Ubuntu for example? Get a usb drive, plug it and bang! It appears on the desktop MacOSX style.
The only BIG problem left is easy, next-next-finish style, standart installation packages across every distro. But hopefully they'll handle this one too.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
I've seen teams require a regulation sized ball and a regulation sized field with paid and licenced officials to enforce the rules.
Microsoft can field a team anywhere for any field. But it most likely won't be a winning team of super stars.
Linux, BSD, and OSX have specific uses (Linux and BSD more so than OSX) and they shine at them. In my mind that's the difference. I don't want a whole team, I just want a really good Linebacker.
I care about two main things...
First, the existence of organizations like the BSA indicates a deep and troubling flaw in the legal system. When you have to encourage people to rat on eachother in order to enforce laws you have a system of laws that are broken and wrong.
The deep and troubling flaw is the extension of copyright beyond commercial reproduction. Commercial reproduction is easy to find and deal with. Controlling it represents no big loss. Controlling copying at a personal level is inherently invasive.
The second issue is this...
If you ever look at the Windows platform, the home of proprietary software, the vast majority of programs on it do many things the users of those programs are not aware of, and are things that are not in those user's best interests. Basically, when you run a piece of proprietary software, you are giving control of your computer to someone else. It's no longer your computer.
If OS X were GPL, I would most likely buy copies of OS X. I do not care if it is free of charge. But I do care that I know what it's doing when it runs, and that it's actions are independently verifiable and auditable. This is likely going to be a real problem when Apple adopts hardware-level DRM.
Also, the GPL is a simple license. It states its intentions at the beginning in simple language, and the legalese is there to support those intentions in a clear and precise manner. It's the most pleasant to read legal document I've ever read.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"The only BIG problem left is easy, next-next-finish style, standart installation packages across every distro. But hopefully they'll handle this one too."
I agree, this is a big one. I think the best system is the one OS X uses, application folders.
I like the fact that DesktopBSD has helpful "control panels" and configuration/installation wizards, it's good stuff.
However, PC-BSD has application folders and that's why I'm going with that. I just think it's the most usable system of progam installation and more importantly, the easiest system for getting RID of programs. Getting rid of a program that's installed it's files all over your HD demands the help of a thing called a package manager or "uninstall wizard" which need a perfect log of where all the little files were installed to.
In practice, the perfect installation log system is never perfect. It happens that it's either not recorded correctly or something changed after the installation which causes the uninstall to fail. If you want to be SURE you just install every program into it's own folder and you'll know that you've gotten rid of everything if you see the folder gone. It's conceptually easier to get your head around and it's just more usable in practice (drag the folder to another PC and it's "installed" there).
Hopefully DesktopBSD will see the light, they're doing well in every other departement.
Good luck guys.
- -- Truth addict for life.
Hmmm, is it really so hard to:
/dev/sndstat
/boot/loader.conf
/boot/kernel/, all there for the loading if you need them. You only need to recompile the kernel to remove drivers.
kldload snd_driver
(loads every sound driver on the system)
cat
(read the output to see exactly which sound driver is being used)
echo 'snd__load="YES"' >>
(tell the kernel to load the specific sound module at bootup)
Remember, 95% of all device drivers in FreeBSD are compiled as modules and stored under
not difficult at all, but as they say who wants to go CLI to fix sound, also when i installed freebsd 5.4 release last week kldload snd_driver didn't do anything for me and I ended up recompiling it.