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24-hour Test Drive of PC-BSD

Posted by Zonk on from the might-get-a-few-reluctant-IT-folks-on-board dept.

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.'"

5 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. "a FreeBSD derivative that emphasizes ease of use" by skeevy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Isn't that a Mac?

    Flame On!

  2. VMWare image available by athloi · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've already got VMs out the nose with different OSs I just had to try. The PC-BSD folks make one readily available at the following location:

    PC-BSD VMWare Image

    I recommend this method of trying out new OSs, or avoiding corrupting your computer's virtue by installing one is made by whichever large West Coast corporation you dislike.

    --
    technical writing / development
  3. Re:Do we really need this? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think your computer is broken.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  4. Re:Do we really need this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.'

  5. userfriendly? by mixenmaxen · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was able to boot into safe mode, log in as root, remount the filesystem as read-write, and try to edit my xorg.conf file. In safe mode, I found that something was wrong with the line terminations when using vi, so I had to use less to view the files and then construct a sed substitution to change the video driver from "nv" to "vesa." Upon reboot, everything worked swimmingly.


    Sounds terribly userfriendly, even my mother would have no trouble installing this.

    wait...