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24-hour Test Drive of PC-BSD
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica has a concise introduction to PC-BSD, a FreeBSD derivative that emphasizes ease of use and aims to convert Windows users. The review describes the installation process, articulates the advantages of PC-BSD,and reveal some of the challenges that the reviewer faced along the way. From the article: 'In the end, I would suggest this distribution to new users provided they had someone to call in case of a driver malfunction during installation. I would also recommend PC-BSD to seasoned Unix users that have never tried using FreeBSD before and would prefer a shallower learning curve before getting down to business.'"
I would also recommend PC-BSD to seasoned Unix users that have never tried using FreeBSD before and would prefer a shallower learning curve before getting down to business.
I don't know... I always thought the learning curve for FreeBSD was pretty shallow. I used GNU/Linux for years before trying FreeBSD, and Linux distributions were all over the board; you never knew what bizarre software configuration you were going to get, or how the system was going to behave or configure. Even after steady use, Linux confused the hell out of me. When I tried FreeBSD, it took a little effort to learn the basics of managing the system: installing, updating, removing software packages. After that it was easy street. Tweaking the base system conf files was obvious... a little too obvious. They say editing text files isn't "intuitive", but this is as close as it gets. For the stuff you can't figure out, the documentation is complete and readily accessible.
Having a front end that helps you autoconfig stuff doesn't actually lesson the learning curve, but in my opinion steepens it. When the autoconfig goes wrong, you're pretty much stuck without a clue.
If this machine had been acquired without OS and the user, instead, decided to buy WindowsXP separately, this user would have had the same problems I had. In my case, the video device wasn't detected, the sound device wasn't detected and the network device wasn't detected. A beginner would also need to rely on someone with experience to get those issues resolved.
I have rather become accustomed to the idea of loading the OS and resolving driver and other hardware configuration issues as part of the installation process. It's the same in Windows as it is for Linux. (Not usually the case with Mac, but they control both the hardware AND the software and there's good reason for that.) The exceptions for this are when a hardware maker cobbles his own OS+Apps+Driver installation software to match the hardware or when, by some uncommon scenario, all hardware in the configuration is identified and supported by whatever comes with the OS. (It happens but it's rare.)
It shouldn't be said about Linux or Windows or *BSD that an expert or experienced user should be available in case of trouble as if this were a problem exclusive to it or to other OSes. It should be said because it's generally true of all.
I am still waiting for a user-friendly PROPRIETARY OS.
I tried to install Windows last week, and it required special drivers to recognize the hard drive. Worse than that, it demanded I enter all kinds of activation keys and jump through various hoops just to get work done. It also didn't include an office suite (a pretty common productivity tool nowadays). After an hour of fiddling with it and reading the useless quickstart guide, I accidentally got infected with malware and could no longer use the computer.
That is far from user friendly. In fact, I would almost say that it was user-hostile.
Of course, different people have different definitions of 'friendly.'
There's a lot of great hardware that is extremely poorly supported under Linux. Certainly, that's not the fault of Linux or its developers, but it's absurd to pretend it's just "shitty hardware".