PC-BSD 7.1 Released With Integrated Software Manager

Death Metal writes "PC-BSD 7.1 is built upon the FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE operating system. FreeBSD is a UNIX-based operating system that provides a high level of security and stability. The Galileo Edition of PC-BSD includes updated versions of KDE (4.2.2) and Xorg (7.4). The latest version of KDE includes new window effects, screen savers, and better 3D Acceleration. PC-BSD exclusively features the Push Button Installer, a software installation wizard with a wide range of applications. The latest version improves PBI self-containment to increase reliability. The Add / Remove Programs tool and the Update Manager have been consolidated into 'Software & Updates.'"

Comments

The problem with PC-BSD is..

[Anonymous Coward]

..it's dying.

captcha: caldera

Re:The problem with PC-BSD is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Elegy For *BSD

I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.

I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.

Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.

10 gigs?

[FudRucker]

of disk space for a friggin OS is just crazy! i like FreeBSD & PCBSD, but it is getting bloated!

i have the disk space (500gigs), but i would have to re-arrange some disk partitions which means i would have to burn several DVDs of backup so i don't lose data, you would think any OS would keep t3h bloat below 5 gigs!

Re:10 gigs?

[jdong]

It's a natural tradeoff when every application is designed to be self-contained. This is the same issue Mac OS X faces with its .app bundles -- each app basically ships a /usr like prefix with all of its dependencies on top of the base OS X API's, and application startup times on cold cache pales to a shared-dependency approach.

Re:10 gigs?

[phantomcircuit]

That would be because PC-BSD includes a ton of stuff in the default installation. I'm sure you can get it down to much less than that fairly easily.

Re:10 gigs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never knew that there could be an OS more bloated then Vista.

Re:10 gigs?

[palegray.net]

While I understand your point in principle, storage is beyond dirt cheap these days. I have a hard time finding laptops with less than a 100 GB drive, and a 1.5 TB drive can be had for $130 on Newegg.

Re:10 gigs?

[FudRucker]

if the OS installer would let you

Re:10 gigs?

[Sneeka2]

Vista default installation ~= 15GB
Obligatory M$ analogy = FAIL

Re:10 gigs?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD benefits from their own kind of reality distortion field. They send waves of thought that make people think they somehow are as small and portable as NetBSD as secure and free as OpenBSD, as fast as Linux and as easy to use as MacOS X.
Instead they are as small and portable as Microsoft Windows, as secure and free as MacOS X, as fast as NetBSD and as easy to use as Linux.
But don't let reality get in your way. FreeBSD is the closest thing to free Mac, not in features but in shared self-deception.

Re:10 gigs?

[samriel]

Yeah, your analogy? Not so much. OSX apps are just
a) a startup script that is auto-run on launch,
b)the .NIB/.XIB interface files,
c) some images, etc. that the application needs to display, and
d) the executable itself.

If you spend any time at all looking through the guts of an OSX system, you'll notice that all the shared dependencies reside within the /Library or /(user)/Library folders.

The reason that a lot of OSX apps are large (not many are huge) is because the developers choose to make one big app with EVERY FRIGGIN LOCALIZATION PACK EVER contained within, instead of compiling a few different localized versions.

Re:10 gigs?

[samriel]

^^^Because I know I'm going to get called out, the dependencies live in /Library or /Users/(user)Library, not /(user)/Library.^^^

Re:10 gigs?

[colinrichardday]

Bloated, or featureful? Does Vista include a decent text editor? Compilers? Server software?

Re:10 gigs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like a little BSD bashing as much as the next linux user but you fanboys keep giving linux a bad name. How many PHBs walk away from Linux because of the endless stream of juvenal pissing contests about how leet Linux is? Linux is over ten years old now and it still regularly takes a crap because Linus and his cronies shove something in the kernel before it's ready for the Big Time. Regularly. So you and your ilk get off the damned high horse and try to adopt a more professional attitude, even in your criticism. It will help a lot going forward.

thanks

Re:10 gigs?

[Cyberax]

My new SSD drive is 64 GB and 10 GB is NOT a small amount.

Ubuntu works just fine with a fraction of that space.

Re:10 gigs?

[Ash-Fox]

How many PHBs walk away from Linux because of the endless stream of juvenal pissing contests about how leet Linux is?

For that reason? Zero.

Linux is over ten years old now and it still regularly takes a crap because Linus and his cronies shove something in the kernel before it's ready for the Big Time.

I thought IPv6 was implemented first on a BSD distribution before Linux?

Re:10 gigs?

[Ash-Fox]

Bloated, or featureful? Does Vista include a decent text editor? Compilers? Server software

You know... For average people, that sounds bloated.

Re:10 gigs?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not a failing of PC-BSD, it is a failing of your SSD. Face it, SSD is not ready for real usage. It has a long way to go before it can compete with standard hard drive capacity and even the supposed benefits (ie. power requirements and life expectancy) are disputable.

Re:10 gigs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should look at most that use libraries *on top of* the base OS X libraries. Most will include the thid party .framework bundle within the .app bundle, very few will install or use an existing third party .framework in ~/Library or /Library.

Re:10 gigs?

[Nimey]

Then PC-BSD 7.1 is not for you. Good thing other operating systems work for you, isn't it?

Re:10 gigs?

[bonch]

This is the same issue Mac OS X faces with its .app bundles -- each app basically ships a /usr like prefix with all of its dependencies on top of the base OS X API's, and application startup times on cold cache pales to a shared-dependency approach.

This is inaccurate. OS X apps link to shared system frameworks in /Library/Frameworks. They can, if they wish, embed a framework in their bundle which will appear in the bundle's internal Frameworks directory. There is no /usr dependency hierarchy in every app...

Re:10 gigs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Vista include a decent text editor?

Does EMACS?

Re:10 gigs?

[JonLatane]

Well, first off, dependencies are, much more often than just the "Library" directories, in their own "Framework" directories. Check /System/Library/Frameworks for the important core Mac OS X frameworks and /Library/Frameworks for your basic system frameworks. You've also probably got a ~/Library/Frameworks directory but there's probably nothing interesting in there unless you're a developer. The rest of the "Library" directories consists more of non-reusable stuff.

However, plenty of applications do just bundle their own versions of dependencies. Just taking a glance around my system, 26.9 of Adium's 60.2MB consists of the "Frameworks" directory in Adium. 122.2MB of iWeb is Frameworks, many of which would probably be useful if they were universally available to developers (FTPKit?). Open source (and open-source-based) applications tend to be the worst about this since they have a habit of packaging large parts of the Linux ecosystem since minor incompatibilities OS X's BSD-grounded system make proper ports less convenient. Having both Crossover and Crossover Games take so much space with so many identical dependencies is just silly. Other notable applications on this front include Battle for Wesnoth and OOo.

Across all applications, localizations are a bit more of a problem, as you said. An even bigger problem is that binaries are often larger simply because they're written in Obj-C; Obj-C supports some very, very cool runtime features not available in any other compiled language, but they add considerably to the binary size.

In general, though, you're right - OS X is far better than Windows about sharing dependencies properly, but there's pretty much no way to get the tight dependency management Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE has without having a repository-based package manager, which is an entirely different software management philosophy. (Although the idealist in me likes to hope it's not the case, that model doesn't really foster the develop-something-good-and-make-money-quickly environment that I like about Mac OS X, since there's such a big barrier between you and users).

Re:10 gigs?

[palegray.net]

I'm typing this reply on a laptop running Ubuntu 8.10. It fits my needs for most development and administration tasks, but the needs of others (such as those interested in running PC-BSD) may vary. I choose hardware and operating system combinations according to the task they're going to perform, with occasional allowances for OS requirements. It's part of the process, and technology marches on.

Re:10 gigs?

[BrainInAJar]

I thought IPv6 was implemented first on a BSD distribution before Linux?

Hell, NFSv3 ( a completely open standard! ) still doesn't work correctly 14 years later...

Re:10 gigs?

[Ash-Fox]

This is inaccurate. OS X apps link to shared system frameworks in /Library/Frameworks. They can, if they wish, embed a framework in their bundle which will appear in the bundle's internal Frameworks directory. There is no /usr dependency hierarchy in every app...

Outside of Apple's frameworks it's very rare to come across other shared libraries as that would require users to run a .pkg installer and Apple is all about the drag and drop. A substantial amount of applications on the OS X platform that frequently use libraries which are popular on other platforms will often have the libraries in the .app bundles rather than in a framework.

Re:10 gigs?

[tomhudson]

i would have to burn several DVDs of backup so i don't lose data

Ah, the naiveté of youth ...

Real BSD users set up an rsync box.

Depending on burned dvds for backup is like depending on pulling out to prevent contraception. Ask Bristol Palin how well that form of "safe sex" worked out. When you lose your data, be sure to post the story to fmylife.com so we can all laugh at your angst- and hubris-filled story.

Re:10 gigs?

[jmastrol]

I was kind of surprised at this requirement myself, but what is interesting is this: During installation you MUST create a 10G "/" partition. It isn't possible to create a 10G "/PCBSD", and then set the remaining partitions up as you would a "typical" FreeBSD system. Discovered this in the RC and thought it was odd. Granted, earlier releases would let you shoot yourself in the foot by creating too small "/" partition, but I think the partitioning wizard is a bit too restrictive IMHO.

Re:10 gigs?

[GMFTatsujin]

Reconciling "Average user" with "BSD installation" ... *pzzzt* *poing* *fotz* (mushroom cloud erupts from brain)

Re:10 gigs?

[colinrichardday]

Yes.

Re:10 gigs?

[bonch]

No, there is not a "substantial amount of applications" that bundle their own frameworks.

Re:10 gigs?

[Architect_sasyr]

Well we could just point him at the cut down installer for PC-BSD that lets him pick and choose his packages. You know, the one found at http://www.freebsd.org/

Obligatory nitpicking.

[kwabbles]

I'm pretty sure it's based on 7.2 PRE, not 7.1. The summary also makes it look like the software manager is a new feature, which it is not. The PBI system has been around for a while in PC-BSD.

Re:Obligatory nitpicking.

[FST777]

I'm pretty sure it's based on 7.2 PRE, not 7.1.

That is correct.

The official website states 7.2-PRERELEASE, but the press release says 7.1-STABLE. Depending on how you track and merge FreeBSD, both may be correct (tracking 7.1-STABLE and backporting functionality from 7.2 would do the trick).

Re:Obligatory nitpicking.

[Fweeky]

Both 7.1-STABLE and 7.2-PRERELEASE are in the same branch; stable/7 or RELENG_7.

Re:Obligatory nitpicking.

[FST777]

Ah, of course! I was confusing it with tracking a specific release, to get security fixes. Besides those, there are of course just two interesting branches: STABLE and CURRENT.

Re:Obligatory nitpicking.

[kwabbles]

I just did a vmware install of it and uname shows 7.2-PRERELEASE. I wonder if that was a last minute thing.

What about XFS?

[TechForensics]

If PC-BSD has Sun XFS, I can't see a reason for it to tank. I know FreeBSD 7.1 has at least a beta implementation.

Re:What about XFS?

[jdong]

I'm quite sure you mean ZFS. XFS is SGI's popular journaling filesystem.

Re:What about XFS?

[phantomcircuit]

ZFS in FreeBSD is still in alpha. Basically it consumes a huge amount of memory and kernel panics if you don't tune it correctly.

Re:What about XFS?

[Fweeky]

This has already been largely fixed in 7.1, with the kernel address space expanded to 6GB.

If you're still on 32bit, well, ZFS will hate you for that in Solaris too.

Re:What about XFS?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about? Sun XFS?

Xorg 7.4?

[BikeHelmet]

How do I find out which version of Xorg I have?

A piece of software I wanted to install recently had two procedures - one for Xorg 7.0 and above, and one for earlier versions.

Xorg -version reports a lot of crap, but never a useful/comparable version number.

X.Org X Server 1.5.2
Release Date: 10 October 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-19-server i686 Ubuntu
Current Operating System: Linux UbuntuViaBox 2.6.27-11-generic #1 SMP Wed Apr 1 20:57:48 UTC 2009 i686
Build Date: 09 March 2009 10:48:54AM
xorg-server 2:1.5.2-2ubuntu3.1 (buildd@rothera.buildd)
        Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org/
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present

I assumed I had at least 7.0...

Re:Xorg 7.4?

[FST777]

That is definitely a version above 7.0. You are looking at the X Server, which is part of X.org. Seeing that it is released in October 2008, and judging by the version (1.5), I'd say it is either 7.3 or 7.4. My guess is the latter.

You want to follow the procedure for 7.0 and above.

A more decent way to check is by looking which packages are installed. Also, since you are using Ubuntu, you can check which release of X was about two months before the release of Ubuntu, that one will probably be in the distro by then.

Re:Xorg 7.4?

[jdong]

An easier way to tell is to try to change some mouse settings. The longer it takes you to figure out where the hell they hid the setting NOW, the newer your Xorg. *ducks*

Re:Xorg 7.4?

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that you're running Ubuntu, so to see your xorg version, try this:

aptitude show xserver-xorg

Re:Xorg 7.4?

[value_added]

How do I find out which version of Xorg I have?

The same as for version numbers for all your other other ports -- pkg_info(7)

pkg_info -Ex xorg

Re:What about [X | Z]FS?

[FST777]

Since it is in FreeBSD, it will be in PC-BSD.

I believe ZFS has been in FreeBSD since 7.0. A quick google teaches me that PC-BSD is enjoying it since then too.

Unix based?

[thetoadwarrior]

FreeBSD is a UNIX-based operating system that provides a high level of security and stability

Maybe I'm wrong (never used Free BSD) but I didn't think it was based on Unix but instead Unix-like.

Re:Unix based?

[Anonymous Coward]

BSDs are descendants of UNIX: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Unix-history.svg

Re:Unix based?

[Galactic Dominator]

Oh, thanks for sharing.

Re:Unix based?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. BSDs are a testament to the low quality of the original UNIX source. BSD was a collection of bugfixes to UNIX source. That a whole OS can be built off *bug* fixes is a strong hint that nobody should use any UNIX-based system that isn't actually AT&T relicensed BSD code.

Re:Unix based?

[ducomputergeek]

BSD can be traced back to MaBell and Unix.

This video has a decent history of BSD in a nutshell:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7833143728685685343

It's linux that advertised itself as being "Unix-like".

Re:Unix based?

[Ian Alexander]

AIUI it, Bill Joy started BSD as a Pascal compiler and an alternate text-editor and grew from there into a project to rewrite UNIX to evade AT&T's copyrights. I wouldn't call the lack of a Pascal compiler a bug.

livecd?

[Tibor the Hun]

Can the DVD download also be used as a live-cd? I'd like to see what it's like before installing.

Re:livecd?

[BrainInAJar]

It'll be exactly like every other operating system that uses X11.

I never understood the appeal of screenshots & livecd's. You can't judge an operating system or distro based on a slow & shitty disk and a half hour of un-demanding use

Re:livecd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can. For example, the package manager. If you haven't seen it before, the LiveCD is the best place to test it out. If you don't like how things are set up by default, or where certain conf files are placed, the LiveCD is the best place to find these things out. A LiveCD is all about finding out where certain things are, and how they're managed. For example, if I hadn't screwed with the Ubuntu LiveCD before I installed it, I wouldn't have known that the xorg.conf is essentially blank now. Which is why there are no new versions of Ubuntu on my systems. If I can't hand-configure something the way it's done in several other distros, I'm not interested.

Re:livecd?

[Rynor]

Nobody is keeping you from adding the settings in xorg.conf, it just uses some defaults if they aren't there.

Re:livecd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. GP is an idiot. Reasonable software defaults with the ability to override is a beautiful design choice, IMO.

Re:livecd?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can hand configure it. Edit the system level configuration that it will make use of like it should have always been doing, or create the Xorg.conf yourself.

Most, and likely eventually all, distros will move to not requiring Xorg.conf, because that's the way Xorg is moving.

Re:livecd?

[pseudonomous]

Now, I don't have personal experiance with Ubuntu here, but I do know that a lot of the time the latest Xorg releases work just fine without an xorg.conf file, and if you don't need one, why include it?

I'll bet dollars to donuts that if you've got Ubuntu, and want to play with you Xorg configuration, all you have to do is basically:

Xorg -configure
mv /root/etc/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
emacs /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Re:livecd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Such "defaults" make a lot of configurations just not work, period. And worse, many systems, Ubuntu included, like to override any changes you make because the new automation thinks it knows better than the user.

What the hell happened to a program during install or invoked manually automatically creating a sane configuration file that at least is guaranteed to half-work on your system rather than some automated garbage not working at all on far too many systems? The people that invented this automated garbage are going against the simplicity that Linux and other *nixlike OSes like *BSD are designed around. Programs that create a full, known good xorg.conf are much better than blank ones that rely on garbage like hald to "detect" your system config and fail way too much in doing so.

Re:livecd?

[Tibor the Hun]

It's useful to see how well it recognizes the hardware.

Re:10 gigs? (So what?)

[Garridan]

Welcome to the 21st century. Downloading 10GB takes a while, but I've got 80GB free on my *laptop* -- and I have three 20GB disk images for virtual machines. Disk space is cheap. If you've got 500GB and you don't have 10GB of contiguous free space... no, you probably don't want to install a new operating system.

Most operating systems (I'm not talking about Haiku or FreeDOS obviously) are meant to be installed on a clean system with a significant amount of hard drive space. What's the problem? I see none.

FreeNAS

[dimension6]

Right. It would sure be nice if the amd64 releases of FreeNAS 0.7 are continued (apparently, there's a kernel panic upon bootup preventing them from releasing the amd64 alpha versions). The current i386 version is limited to 512MB of kmem (unless the kernel is recompiled), which is DEFINITELY not enough for ZFS (even a 1GB allocation is insufficient). With my max allocation at 512MB, I've had the kernel panic about 5 times in one day while transferring large amounts of data.

My advice to those of you who are using ZFS in FreeBSD: set the vm.kmem_size and vm.kmem_size_max in /boot/loader.conf to at least 1.5GB (assuming a 2GB system, 512MB remains reserved for the OS).

Why did BSD fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's ask ourselves the real question: why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personae?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

New BSD-based release coming

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a new BSD-based release coming called Tomahawk Desktop (www.tomahawkcomputers.com). See the site for more detail.

So just like Ubuntu

[Gothmolly]

but with a different mascot, a different package manager, and different themes ?

Snark aside - what does this BSD do that any Linux distro or other BSD doesn't ?

Re:So just like Ubuntu

[Ian Alexander]

It's just FreeBSD with KDE and a convenient package manager- in addition to ports and conventional binary packages PC-BSD also supports PBI's, which are closer to .app bundles that you find on OS X than a traditional Linux package. It also comes with a (imho) well-designed installer that makes installing faster and easier than the normal FBSD installer.

Basically, if you like FreeBSD and KDE but don't really have the time or inclination to set it all up yourself, PC-BSD is convenient.

Re:So just like Ubuntu

[rusl]

Well, I'm just guessing but it may be more user friendly. Last time I tried BSD I didn't complete the install because:
A) the text based install gave me lots of options I didn't understand and I couldn't Google the answer because the network wasn't installed yet
B) I've already got a fine working linux install and I wasn't motivated to do much work to really install it - i just wanted to test/play. However, my avoidance of getting really into the details would be quite parallel to a newbie who really wants to adopt but is foiled by getting in over his head.

Re:So just like Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

The Push Button Installer. It allows installation like on Windows. Download, click, enjoy. While Linux distributions usually have more sophisticated and featureful package managers they really don't allow that, because they are sophisticated and want to share every dependency. You will never have to resolve missing dependencies or conflicts in the version of libraries.

Please note that I am not arguing that this is good for everybody. But it definetly fills a relevant niche where no other Linux or BSD lives.

Re:So just like Ubuntu

[MichaelSmith]

Synaptic installs applications with fewer clicks than anything on windows.

Re:So just like Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is in the repository. That really is the point.

And imho the repository aproach has its other weaknesses. Like it creates lots of work for maintainers. I can't really see how it will scale in the future. Every added application creates work for every following major repository upgrade, because you have to make it run with the new versions of its dependencies.
One version of a library must fit every application (or you create several co-existing packages for the versions of the library). It is quite hard to try some bleeding-edge software without crippling your entire system.
And it is hardly applicable to closed-source software.

I am not saying that repositories or Synaptic is bad. Just that there are good reasons to use self-contained installers.

Re:So just like Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

any program installer for linux is idiotic, you have to use a package manager, what if you want to download something from the internet and the package manager doesn't have it, if that happens then you are expected to compile the program yourself which is the sole reason why I don't use linux anymore

Re:livecd is great

[rusl]

It's vital for seeing how the OS recognises hardware. Sometimes even different versions of the same distribution will have major differences and the new one just doesn't work with a piece of hardware! Even if it only requires minor tweaking knowing that some important hardware (like a wifi card, or a RAID card!) is not going to work out of the box is pretty vital to doing a successful install.

support base ..

[viralMeme]

The support forum does seem to be popular. I wonder is now a good time to revive United Linux?