Slashdot Mirror
DesktopBSD 1.0 Final Released
Don Church writes "DesktopBSD is reporting that the 1.0 Final of DesktopBSD was released today for both 32-bit and 64-bit x86 architectures. This cutting edge FreeBSD derivative now includes KDE 3.5.1 and a host of tools designed to make the BSD experience more palatable to novices. The DVD release even includes Amarok, Firefox and other popular software ready to go. They are offering downloads via several mirrors or the official torrent."
"even includes Amarok, Firefox and other popular software"
Yeah, well so does my FreeBSD discs and every linux distro in existance. what's so special about that?
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Sigh, guess I'll wait
Yawn.
Are they running this server on DesktopBSD? :)
From here...
Hardware requirements and support
DesktopBSD is running on any decent i386, AMD64 or EM64T computer. We recommend at least 4 GB of disk space and 256 MB memory for installation, maybe less is possible.
If you want to know if a specific hardware component is supported, please see the FreeBSD Hardware Notes for i386 or AMD64/EM64T.
Most people have a hard time remembering if their CPU is made by Pentium or made by Intel. They won't have a clue whether it's i386 or AMD64.
RC3 screenshots
..the term desktop is in relation to the hardware that is running the site...any other pages with info on this?
Torrent here: http://linuxtracker.org/download.php?id=1734&name= DesktopBSD-1.0-x86-DVD.iso.torrent
RIS?
You're comparing apples to oranges. FreeBSD is a single, cohesive operating system. DesktopBSD is a single, cohesive operating system. They are two distinctly different operating systems.
/usr/ports/UPGRADING before I use portupgrade.
That would be like saying, "I installed Debian stable on my computer and I found that all of the software was out of date. Therefore Genoo must be out of date as well." We both know that's not accurate.
Having not installed DesktopBSD before, maybe they have some new tools for ports for "everyday" users. I have never had problems with ports on my FreeBSD servers, btw - but I also read
MirrorDot and Corel Casche are out as the page is giving a database error and they snapped that. Maybe it will be up later.
Nothing to see here (for now).
Procrastinating life a way at a rapid rate of speed.
This looks very promising. Lately, FreeBSD as a desktop has been plagued by missing libs and lack of maintainers for certain applications requiring a lot of configuation, most of the time, using -current worked to fix a lot of these issues, but not always. I hope DesktopBSD addresses these issues. Without bsdforums, a lot of new users would have been helpless, heh.
Mirrordot cache: http://mirrordot.org/stories/e7cd62fa4b24ca2788721 1c05d686136/index.html
? id=43&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=15&tx_ttnews%5BbackPi d%5D=55&cHash=cddb1e432f
And Coral Cache:
http://www.desktopbsd.net.nyud.net:8080/index.php
When will slashcode be modified to automatically use the cached pages? Harumph! </SARCASM>
Muwahahaha
Having not installed DesktopBSD before, maybe they have some new tools for ports for "everyday" users. I have never had problems with ports on my FreeBSD servers, btw - but I also read /usr/ports/UPGRADING before I use portupgrade.
:-)
I've never had any problems with ports on my FreeBSD server, either. The problems I had were all desktop-related, e.g., the latest version of some Gnome library is required in order to run app A, but breaks app B. These are the kinds of rough edges that you don't see as a Linux user, because the developers themselves are all running Linux, and if something breaks, they know right away. Also, I think the level of testing and effort that goes into packaging desktop software on, say Ubuntu and Debian, is an order of magnitude greater than the effort that goes into the same stuff for FreeBSD -- simply because the size of the Linux desktop community is an order of magnitude greater. Of course I'd love to be proved wrong about DesktopBSD, and I admit to not even having RTFA, since it's slashdotted
Find free books.
i found this hella insightful.
I AM FISH!
Hi there!
I'm a frequent reader of Slashdot and it seems like a lot of stories are run which are version change announcements of various Open Source projects.
Have you considered starting a separate website for nothing but software update announcements like this? That way people interested in such things can stay fresh on the latest in software announcements, and this site can concentrate on meatier topics.
Otherwise, great job!
Signed,
Anonymous Coward
This is just a baseless troll, without any real information.
WTF? I can't remember the last time I saw FreeBSD ports break. Not even a SINGLE package. They ALL compile and install perfectly every time. Hell, I've UPGRADED my system from FreeBSD version to version, never bothered uninstalling the old ports, and everything continues to work fine. I've never seen ANY other OS handle upgrades remotely as gracefully.
Besides, even if you did have a problem with compiling from ports (which I have a very hard time believing), why didn't you just install from the binary packages, instead?
I can't believe this is anything other than another anti-BSD troll.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
FreeBSD could still beat Linux to the desktop just because it's standardised on what comes with it, and you could release packages for it a lot more easily. What's lacking is hardware support (which is even more miserable than linux), and desktop performance. If they worked on desktop performance, I think they could easily get drivers by porting them from Linux. I wouldn't mind running FreeBSD on my laptop if only they'd get the performance right. I have actually dual booted FreeBSD and Linux on the same box, both running the same version of KDE, and FreeBSD is just dog slow compared to Linux, which isn't that fast to begin with. Sure KDE can be a hog, but it's either more of a hog on FreeBSD or FreeBSD just doesn't pay attention to a desktop user's needs.
Ahem. That isn't a very constructive criticism. Yes, people that use FreeBSD know that is more appropriate for a server, although that hasn't stopped me amongst others from successfully using FreeBSD on a desktop/workstation.
And if you had such problems, what was wrong with the mailing lists? irc? forums? etc.
The ports system like anything else; yum, rpm, emerge, pkgsrc, etc. all have there gripes, and how are such things supposed to get better for you --and others-- when you do not tell anyone at the time with the required information; that is like going to the doctor and saying I feel ill and not giving any symptoms that are needed for diagnosis.
You get what you pay for in the Open Source Software and/or Free Software world, a lot of what you use is done with peoples unpaid spare time. People like you make us wonder why we bother.
/. is good for you.
Gosh, now 99.98% of the people who comment are MIA constantly clicking refresh!
Lets hope the distraction is large enough that we get less story dupes...
Is there a fairly easy way to install this onto a PC already running Windows XP, keeping the XP installation the way it is? ie not reinstalling apps and backing up files.
I assume I would be able to select which OS to run at startup.
Thanks!
There are two major issues with BSD and the desktop.
1. Technical which more competant people than I have commented on.
2. Business is war and this is part of the war of Free (as in speach) Open (as in can read the source code) Source Software fight with closed priperitory software. Linux comes under one license. Major distributions are scatter across the globe. Read many political and judical systems. The various desktop BSDs are another front. Difference license. Different history. Different source location for the distributions. No way can MS fight and win all these fights. Impossible. Too many different sets of circumstances.
I wonder how this differs from PC-BSD.
They managed to ship earlier despite a later start. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
Before we get into the usual banter about BSD, Netcraft, or whatever they've confirmed recently, I have to say that I use BSD more now then ever.
It would never have dawned on me to bother with trying BSD as a desktop until I had some extra cash in the account and setup a system for network monitoring and packet scanning. With the bulk of the load being network-based, I figured this might as well be my desktop system too to garner more bang for the buck. This, mind you, after having used GNU/Linux and Windows for years and relegating BSD to beige server boxen only.
That was a about a year ago. Today every PC I own runs FreeBSD as the primary desktop.
It's not without it's issues when you install from the standard FreeBSD disks. I had to compile OOOrg from ports using flags (with cups, kde), and I had to install the linuxflashplayer-wrapper and tinker with it for a while to get it running...so yes, there are dozens of "little" things that keep this from desktop adoption.
If a distribution such as DesktopBSD can create prepackaged desktop installations with a preconfigured flash-player, OOOrg, etc...I don't see why many people wouldn't at least try it out. The package management from a desktop user perspective has been great (I prefer it over apt, yum or portage), I have no failed installations due to -cpio bad magic, checksig errors (when I know the keys are installed), etc...
Be prepared though, with this install you get a basic desktop. There is still much work to be done, but this is a nice start from a group of guys I can totally relate to.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
... and living in Miami.
Lots of ports break on AMD64 (all the free Lisps, for example). In all cases I've seen it's been because the package didn't (yet) work on AMD64, so the ports tree can't be blamed, but still they don't _always_ work.
Knowing a bit about what you're doing is fairly important with ports, especially when dealing with complex upgrades like Gnome; dependency tracking's a lot less anal than apt/dpkg. This is good when you've got something installed from outside ports, and works nicely when you just want to pick and choose a few things to update (say, after running portaudit or tracking an interesting update on FreshPorts/commit logs).
Geeky FreeBSD users need a desktop too, and now we have three variants to choose from; FreeBSD, PC BSD and DesktopBSD. YMMV; just because it's aimed at desktops doesn't mean it's aimed at yours or your mother's.
. . . a host of tools designed to make the BSD experience more palatable to novices
Like Jenna Jameson wallpaper?
BSD now ships a more recent cut of KDE than Gentoo does. Wow. Never thought I'd see that.
Respected Slashdot users made a prediction today: DesktopBSD the desktop ready and user friendly port of FreeBSD is dying! The website, reportedly run on IIS, crashed at 3 minutes past being posted to Slashdot.org this afternoon.
Remember that Slashdot confirms DesktopBSD's site is DYING!
Oh You POS
Don't troll this, you damn trolls!
Then you wernt using them correctly..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's been 18 months or so since I cvsupped the core OS. I'll be looking at DesktopBSD as an option the next time I do that.
It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: NetBSD is dying
Sorry, that is just wrong. Free is a not bad system, but I have seen more than a few broken ports problems. One of the big issues is binary drivers and programs in the ports tree that require signing licence agreements. Installing OpenOffice I had to stop and download three different licences before it finally puked and just wouldn't install. Realplayer doesn't run nativly and has to use Linux Binary compatiblity mode, Flash is a program that just doesn't work. The alternatives cause Firefox to crash randomly. These are problems in ADDITION to the installer. It has been a while since I installed Free but we stopped using it a while ago due to one of the worst installers I have EVER seen. It wouldn't resolve DNS correctly and if you made a mistake, you are starting ALL over again. After 6 people (all OBSD people, so we are not talking n00bs) tried and failed to make the installer work correctly we took all our FreeBSD disks and threw them out the 18th floor of my friend's appartment building. Lastly, when I tried to boot up the computer behind my firewall without passing defining a local domain suffex it would hang on the sendmail script for 10 to 15 min before continueing on with the boot. While these issues may have been fixed, what I saw was a dev team more instrested in programing SMP into the kernel then fixing the existing problems with their installer or their OS. Until that attitude changes, I will not be using FreeBSD again anytime soon. Just my 2 cents, sorry about the spelling =P Peace
Will they be releasing a version for the AlphaStation? I have this nice machine here and would like to run that on it...
Actually, I tend to prefer FreeBSD, but have never gotten gst-ffmpeg (for GNOME) or mplayer in ports to compile; and since I'm on a source-built machine, it won't let me fetch a package.
Other than this one instance, FreeBSD has been great as well as fast with the proper optimizations in make.conf.
I haven't used FreeBSD for awhile but occasionally I have had to search for packages because some ports would not compile or would sig11. It was not often but I used FreeBSD as a desktop and installed a ton of software on it.
http://saveie6.com/
fucking n00b
"WTF? I can't remember the last time I saw FreeBSD ports break. Not even a SINGLE package."
Ah come on now. I have run freebsd servers for years and I can tell you from direct experience that there have been numerous times I could not get one port or another to build. The one I remember being pissed off the most was net-snmp for a while. I waited for months and emailed the author but it still didn't get fixed so I had to compile from source (something I do not like to do as a matter of course).
With all those ports there are bound to be defects at some time or another. I also remember I had problems with sablotron for a while too.
evil is as evil does
That's insane. I've never seen anything like that, and I've certainly compiled MPlayer dozens of times. If I did see that, I'd fix it.
How about posting the log of this MPlayer error?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That much is true, only because it has Java as a dependency. I can't see how that would cause it to fail to compile. Anyhow, you can always disable Java (hence the license agreements) with "-DWITHOUT_JAVA".
Yes it does, but it still works just fine (just takes a while to install all the Linux base libs). If you don't want to do that, you can always install MPlayer/Xine, which will run natively, and use the Win32 DLLs.
It had it working just fine back when I needed it. Then I got annoyed with all the ads and animations and uninstalled it all-together.
Yes, that much is true. The open source flash libraries are terribly unstable, but that has NOTHING to do with FreeBSD, as they exhibit the same behavior on Linux.
What the hell? The FreeBSD installer is basically a step-up from the Slackware installer, and a hell of a lot better than the limited and bare-bones OpenBSD installer. You can always abort whatever step you're on, go back to the main screen, and start that step again. I have no idea where you're getting the idea from that you are somehow stuck with your mistakes.
First legitimate complaint I've heard so far... Yes, that minor issue is very easily worked-around.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I guess I'll be the one who dares to ask it: What are the key differences between FreeBSD and Linux? (I'm mostly interested in the technical ones.)
;)]?
To me, a full-time Linux user, FreeBSD remains as that alternative exotic Unix thingy, which (because of Linux's greateness) has no reason to exist whatsoever. Disclaimer: I know I'm extremely wrong here, but I just don't know why and I hope someone will enlighten me in a friendly tone.
To put it simply: Given the existence of Linux, a technically superb and free as in speech OS, why would anyone be interested in FreeBSD [I hope you forgive me
And as inexperimented to various unixes as I am, I've had such a though time with various Linuxes to get to install the software I wanted (eh, I'm a n00b!), as I never had any software resisting me yet in FreeBSD
You just got troll'd!
RIS?
I don't get it.
C-x C-s C-x k
ftp://ftp.desktopbsd.net/torrents/
OK So I am a long time user of FreeBSD, and don't see any reason to switch to this DesktopBSD, but yet I wonder, what exactly is DesktopBSD. Is it a fork? Is it pre-confiured FreeBSD with flashy installation wizard?
Anyone?
The OSS ecosystem is healthier with two viable desktop systems to choose from, rather than just Linux.
There are more than two. Considerably more than two.
I use NetBSD, for instance.
Yes it does, but it still works just fine (just takes a while to install all the Linux base libs). If you don't want to do that, you can always install MPlayer/Xine, which will run natively, and use the Win32 DLLs.
MPlayer: when you configure the args at compile time to compile the Realplayer codecs it pukes when it reaches them. I belive the problem I was having was that there was no codec avalible for it to download. It also won't compile them by default so you have to set the flag at compile time. Never did get it to work correctly, ditched it. As for Xine, not an app I am familiar with so I didn't install it.
That much is true, only because it has Java as a dependency. I can't see how that would cause it to fail to compile. Anyhow, you can always disable Java (hence the license agreements) with "-DWITHOUT_JAVA".
Tried this and it still borked. It was a problem with the compile script. (this was a good 8 or 9 months ago so I don't remember the exact error). I certainly don't feel like spending hours fixing their script so I just used Abbi Word. Which BTW compiled beautifully.
You strike me as someone who has never acctually installed Free yourself. Esspecially if you aren't aware of the installer problems. Even the FreeBSD diciples among my friends freely admit that the installer is a huge dog and a major downfall of the system. Esspecially it not resolving DNS correctly. Unless you only install off of CD media, a method I almost never use. FTP and HTTP installs are seriously borked in Free. At least the older versions. I heard rumors of a new installer being created but I have yet to see it. As for the slackware installer.. haven't used it since almost certainly before you knew what a computer was. When I last used slackware it came with a little red book with very small text and step by step instructions much like the current Gentoo CD FAQ. Back when 8 megs of ram cost $900. weee! I imagine it has changed a bit in the mean time. As for the OBSD installer... it works, everytime. Enough said.
Lastly, when I tried to boot up the computer behind my firewall without passing defining a local domain suffex it would hang on the sendmail script for 10 to 15 min before continueing on with the boot.
First legitimate complaint I've heard so far... Yes, that minor issue is very easily worked-around.
Okay, THAT was an issue that I had almost a year ago. That the developers are all high on their new bells and whistles and STILL haven't fixed OBVIOUS bugs.. that says alot about how I can expect future bugs to be treated.. if at all.
Sorry, but there is NO way that you will get me to agree that working on new features is more important then developing stable and bug free code. Once you have THAT dragon slayed, you can start looking at new bells and whistles. If you don't... well then free will end up being the spagetti nightmare that the windows code base now is.
Database Error The current username, password or host was not accepted when the connection to the database was attempted to be established!
Oh please. I have used FreeBSD for about 6 years now, and I can recall numerous times where ports broke after a portupgrade. It happens--you just have to know to contact the port's maintainer.
Having said that, my first linux system was redhat 6.0. I didn't use linux for a number of years, and just started using gentoo a few months ago, so I don't know too much about it yet. But I do know this: FreeBSD doesn't buckle under load. During a port install, I/O is essentially unaffected. From what I have seen, this is nowhere near the case with Linux. The only reason that I switched to linux is that FreeBSD amd64 support has been lacking. If something has changed and this DesktopBSD thing is really nice, I might consider switching back.
They forgot to include the performance!
OpenBSD is actively replacing GPL code with BSD to excise the last parts (although I seriously doubt we'll see another BSD-licensed C compiler).
Perhaps if they weren't so intent on wasting time, they could be exciting enough to get funding!
Seriously, I think the BSD community's devotion to its license is notable, but they're never going to make any progress at all if they're so fanatically opposed to the GPL. Since the GPL doesn't affect normal users at all (rather, just the people that want to take and not give back), it seems like a dramatic waste of time. They're not about to win anyone over that is going to do anything for their cause -- unless their cause is to be a free programmer for the proprietary software industry.
Sorry BSD guys -- the GPL is huge! You'll never escape it! David Wheeler surveyed license penetration in 2003 by looking at Freshmeat and SourceForge. GPL-licensed code came in around 70%, BSD licensed code around 4-7%. LGPL - the FSF's answer to BSD - came in at 5-10%!
As a parttime job I currently 'play' administrator for a small company... They are running some remote terminal servers for a few Windows apps they really need still, rest of their desktop apps are all either native FreeBSD or some Linux binaries. Not a very large installation, only some 8 or so machines, all pxe booted diskless machines (tho they have a local flash disk), and easily maintained from a central server. They run about as many servers for hosting a bunch of web apps and some firewalls. (and an oddball linux and windows machine here and there)
Anyway, seems to work pretty well for them. Almost anything they use is built from source locally but by some centralized machines, and is distributed in a controlled way as binary packages.
Just got asterisk to realize we have isdn hardware, nice small scale voip project is next, kiax is already running.
And yeah, I did setup most of that environment, its interesting how esp. the developers and web people seem to be quite content with it.
you would know that
Modem refers to the actual computer
Computer refers to the monitor
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
OK, do me a favor and get yourself a FreeBSD box. as root, go into /usr/ports/misc/instant-workstation and run a "make install clean" and let me know if that works for you. Hasn't worked for me in ages. There's no way to get a quick desktop with FreeBSD without doing a bunch of work -- installing X, a desktop and then X apps so that you can actually use it (firefox, gaim, xmms/rhythmbox et al).
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Shows how much you know. I'm using a nicely updated FreeBSD 6.0 right now. Using Firefox 1.5 compiled from ports (with a minor modification to have it use GTK1 instead of 2). In fact, practically every program I'm using was compiled from ports, perhaps with the exception of MPlayer, since I wanted a CVS snapshot, not the last (1-year old) release.
Yes, well, the "FreeBSD diciples" you know may quite possibly be idiots. I have no way of knowing.
Nope, still the same-old installer. If it ain't broke...
Definately not. Linux has only been around about 15 years now, and I've got a much longer history with computers than that. In fact I still sometimes use a '81 QUME terminal I kept around.
Only if you paid for it... I'm sure plenty of us were loading up floppies at school/work instead of paying for it.
If only that were true. I've run across lots of systems where OpenBSD didn't like the disk geometry, couldn't load a driver for the CD-ROM, didn't have appropriate network card drivers, would lock-up upon kernel boot-up, would start throwing out read-errors halfway through installation, etc. The most annoying, though, is one I went through repeatedly... The OpenBSD boot disk/CD isn't a big fan of my Alpha system, and if it sits idle (no keypresses) for more than about 2 minutes, you can't input anything. Now, to make this problem all the more horendous, it loads the de driver before the dc one (took quite a while for me to figure-out this problem) so these hundreds of megs of dist files were downloading at 1KB/s, meaning I'd have to sit there at the keyboard for a very long time to get the thing installed.
This is beyond ridiculous. Nothing you have listed could even remotely be considered a bug in FreeBSD, at all. At most you can consider the above an inconvenience. Perhaps a lack of polish.
I'm just wasting my time. I'm done with this nonsense zealotry... Send a bugreport, post some details, etc. Otherwise, you're just blowing hot air.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I've had absolutely no problems building mplayer. None at all. The only thing I've ever had problems with was with a perl upgrade late last year. But that was only because I didn't read the UPDATING notice like I should have.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
How is Java Support? Can I run eclipse?
MPlayer: when you configure the args at compile time to compile the Realplayer codecs it pukes when it reaches them. I belive the problem I was having was that there was no codec avalible for it to download. It also won't compile them by default so you have to set the flag at compile time. Never did get it to work correctly, ditched it.
/usr/lib/codecs and then compile MPlayer without any special arguments. My .rm files works just fine.
I always download the 12M all codec pack and put it in
This is really a great news for BSD lovers... FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and a now wow a DesktopBSD! cool1
- Yes, but does it run Lunix?
If you're asking, you should use Ubuntu.
The other distros (and BSDs) are for people who don't mind surfing around, finding the pros and cons, reading about them till you understand them and what they'll mean for you, and making a decision like that. i.e. they're hard work. Ubuntu is easy and novice friendly.
I'm very sorry to add this qualifier (trust me, it's the only one): only use Ubuntu if you have at least 256 megabytes of RAM. If you don't, you should probably stick with whatever you have working for you now, because nothing new will work that well for you.
Anyone who says the ports never breaks isnt a true freebsd user.
Almost every distro of *nix that has needs other packages will break sometimes, thats the biggest fault of opensource software, almost everything has dependices.
I havent seen DLL hell in years, but I've had KDE/Gnome hell on every upgrade.
my, don't I feel foolish =P http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
Forget BSD desktop! Until you can deliver PRO-AUDIO layer/apps like Linux then it's waste of my time.
Where is ALSA for BSD? Where is JACK audio connection kit? Where is Ardour, Rosegarden?
"I want to do all the fun bits and basically what the hell I want
but some mean nasty manager is trying to make me do some real
boring stuff because its important. I don't like this so I'm
going to whinge and bitch , throw all my toys out the pram and
generally be a prima donna , then let the whole world know about
how bad everything is in the team and if only they did it my
way it would all work so much better because I'm a genius and
grade A know-it-all"
unices
!!!
:)
I have posted that in another thread but, here you are:
BSD
Bad Sofware Developpers
Badly Squeeezing for Dollars
Sorry, I could not help it!
or
Beware! Some Despicable
BaStarDs sons of UNIX
Begging for Some Dollars!
--
This one was bad at all neither !
---
Yep.. its true.. No exuse.
Only perhaps these:
- Montepulziano d'Abruzzio " Denominazione d'Origine Contallata", La Rinalda 2004 - 1 Bottle
- Vitoria "Gran Reserva" 1997, Valdepenas, denominacion de Origen, Tempranillo - 2 Bottles
- Cotes du Rhone 2004, Denomination d'origine - 2 Bottles
- some still to come...
that we are finishing here !!!
It is being a great night here! We have also been trying the DesktopBSD 1.0 distro. Pretty good actually... Not all the good stuff is Linux...
!!!
Have to disagree with you on one thing. If you upgraded and didn't see anything break, you haven't been doing it for long.
I am a BSD fan. Why, I am typing this from my FreeBSD desktop at work. But I admit that upgrades (at least once) broke quite a bit. When BSD went from a.out to ELF, a ton of libraries stopped working as advertised.
I have also had problems with ports, but very rarely. Most notably browser plug-ins and java related software have given me fits. But those are the exceptions, not the rules. To be honest, I have had more difficulty getting a CD player to work on Red Hat (at a previous job) than I have with anything on FreeBSD (Java excepted).
Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.
I think you misunderstood the point in that comment of mine... I haven't seen any other OS upgrade even from one version to the next, without serious breakage. That FreeBSD works smoothly even after just one upgrade is a significant achievment.
Yes, that would be the time NOT to upgrade, but to install from scratch. There's no way that change could possibly be handled gracefully.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Overrated by who? Myself?
"my only issues have been when web browsers or similar eat enormous amounts of RAM and I/O capacity"
yep, Firefox.
and it ain't crash proof either!
(compare that to opera 8.5, mozilla got some work to do)
the themes are nice though..