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Ask Slashdot: Workaday Software For BSD On the Desktop?
An anonymous reader writes So for a variety of reasons (some related to recent events, some ongoing for a while) I've kinda soured on Linux and have been looking at giving BSD a shot on the desktop. I've been a Gentoo user for many years and am reasonably comfortable diving into stuff, so I don't anticipate user friendliness being a show stopper. I suspect it's more likely something I currently do will have poor support in the BSD world. I have of course been doing some reading and will probably just give it a try at some point regardless, but I was curious what experience and advice other slashdot users could share. There's been many bold comments on slashdot about moving away from Linux, so I suspect I'm not the only one asking these questions. Use-case wise, my list of must haves is: Minecraft, and probably more dubiously, FTB; mplayer or equivalent (very much prefer mplayer as it's what I've used forever); VirtualBox or something equivalent; Firefox (like mplayer, it's just what I've always used, and while I would consider alternatives, that would definitely be a negative); Flash (I hate it, but browsing the web sans-flash is still a pain); OpenRA (this is the one I anticipate giving me the most trouble, but playing it is somewhat of an obsession).
Stuff that would be nice but I can live without: Full disk encryption; Openbox / XFCE (It's what I use now and would like to keep using, but I could probably switch to something else without too much grief); jackd/rakarrack or something equivalent (currently use my computer as a cheap guitar amp/effects stack); Qt (toolkit of choice for my own stuff). What's the most painless way to transition to BSD for this constellation of uses, and which variety of BSD would you suggest?
Stuff that would be nice but I can live without: Full disk encryption; Openbox / XFCE (It's what I use now and would like to keep using, but I could probably switch to something else without too much grief); jackd/rakarrack or something equivalent (currently use my computer as a cheap guitar amp/effects stack); Qt (toolkit of choice for my own stuff). What's the most painless way to transition to BSD for this constellation of uses, and which variety of BSD would you suggest?
Fits your bill.
It's basically a respin of FreeBSD with some packages preinstalled and a nice desktop from the get-go. It includes Firefox and Flash in a default install, works as a VirtualBox guest and host, there's a Java implementation for your Minecraft fix, and there's good documentation.
You can also choose between several DEs and WMs, such as KDE, Cinnamon, FVWM, Xfce, and many others.
Just go with FreeBSD. It's the one with most broad hardware support and easiest to transition from Linux. The major desktop projects (KDE, XFCE, GNOME (probably not any more) try to have FreeBSD support as their priority. Less so for the other BSDs.
OpenBSD and NetBSD have their pluses, and excel in their respective areas. I think that after getting used to FreeBSD, you will have an easier time with OpenBSD on your firewall and NetBSD on your toaster :P
Get a Mac.
Use Mac OS X.
Mac OS X natively supports Minecraft, FTB, mplayer (and VLC), VirtualBox, Firefox, Flash, and OpenRA, which is your list of essentials.
As for your nice-to-haves, OSX provides FileVault (home directory encryption rather than whole-disk encryption), plenty of audio tools (including platform-native Audio Units), and Qt.
Just sayin'.
Submitted this awhile ago and never actually thought it would get posted. Asked something similar (and got some good responses) over here: https://slashdot.org/comments....
"for variety of reasons". Who are we kidding? It's the fucking systemd by Redhat's Poettering.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Macs arn't exactly known for their low prices and frankly, while the OS, internal hardware and screens might be fantastic, the keyboards and mice are bloody appalling - a triumph of style over usability and then some. So you can add on the price of a proper keyboard and 3 button mouse (if you want full X app functionality) on top of the Mac itself if you're buying a desktop.
I have been a huge supporter of Linux since I brought up my first Linux box in September of 1996. I sneaked Linux onto the raised floor of a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 company in about 1998. By the time I left that job, RHEL was the preferred O.S. with well over 200 (virtual + physical) systems in use.
On the off chance that someone in a position of authority over Linux development reads this, you people are cutting your own throats with lunacy such as systemd and networkmanager.
Like the original poster, I am starting to look for alternatives to Linux.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
What about using a Mac and using its underlying BSD-based operating system?
FreeBSD is a safe bet. Used it for a year as desktop. XFCE, virtualbox, firefox are no problem. Flash might be a pain. Don't know about minecraft. Give it a whirl.
You also get full disk encryption if you like, swap is encrypted by default. It is the most secure operating system available with encryption built in at several layers of the OS.
The best implementation of suspend / resume for laptops of any BSD.
If you are looking to a toolbox like OS OpenBSD is easy to configure, use and is a cleanly designed system with excellent documentation.
(I use both OpenBSD and FreeBSD).
If most of your applications are open source, switching to BSD will be fairly straight forward on that front. That's particularly since you're coming from Gentoo (i.e. you'll probably have to compile a lot of the software that you want to run under BSD).
The biggest hurdles are going to be the sorts of things that a generic question cannot address. Is your hardware compatible with the version of BSD that you've selected? Unlike Linux, where everyone is using the same kernel and has almost the same access to kernel modules, different implementations of BSD use different kernels. As such, selecting an implementation depends as much on low level details as it does on the userspace. (While I've pointed out hardware compatibility, any feature that is found in the kernel needs consideration.)
Another consideration is whether you're comfortable with managing BSD systems. Unlike hardware support, this is difficult to assess objectively. Some people like the core OS being a unified system that you update all at once. Other people like the piecemeal approach of Linux. Keep in mind that the core OS could mean everything from the kernel, to development tools, to the X server. (It does vary a bit from implementation to implementation.)
You will also run into a bunch of stuff that you'll have to relearn, particularly if you're accustomed to working in the shell. Software packaging and installation is the first one you'll bump into, but BSD also has it's own set of utilities. Some of these utilities are quite similar to the GNU utilities, but the extended functionality is quite different.
If you want to switch to BSD, I suggest doing it on a secondary computer first. If you run into specific issues, ask specific questions. Odds are that those issues can be resolved, but it will take time to sort through all of them. BSD can be an immense pleasure to use, but it involves a lot more than which applications are and aren't available.
...think you wouldn't be able to find a modern browser, media player or window manager for FreeBSD; Firefox, mplayer and XFCE are all available there. It's as if you think the BSD family is something completely different and incompatible with the rest of the UNIX world.
FreeBSD is the fastest, easiest to use and most widely supported option you will find. You can run any program that you can run on Linux, you'll never have to worry about running out of RAM due to FreeBSD's advanced memory optimization algorithms, and installing software is a cinch. You have two ways to do everything, and you don't have to worry about being locked in to the vendor's way of using the software that's available to you, because FreeBSD gives you all the control you could want. Additionally FreeBSD doesn't crash, and it's completely invulnerable to security vulnerabilities due to the included bhyve hypervisor which keeps each process in its own FreeBSD jail. You'll have to configure the IPs for each jail statically, though which can be a pain, but it's worth it. Additionally, FreeBSD is much faster at opening files because it caches the entire file system in memory, which isn't possible in other operating systems, but due to the aforementioned memory optimization algorithms, is perfectly sensible. Additionally, you can mock users of all other operating systems, such as DOS or OS/2, which lack the great features and security of FreeBSD. If you want to compare FreeBSD to other BSDs, such as iOS or Android, that's understandable, but neither of those operating systems give you full root mode or allow you to compile your own software. Additionally, FreeBSD has recently adopted the Clang compiler, which emits a sound reminiscent of two metal bars colliding to let you know your compilation is complete, and colorizes your warnings if you have a hard time parsing your own output. If you want the the latest file system, or multiprocessor support, though, you should think about using Dragonfly, which has these features built in.
In summary, if you prefer emacs and lisp to vi and C, you should use Linux, which is written in lisp on an emacs editor. However, if you feel more comfortable with vi, or are looking forward to trying out the soon to be released second edition, vim, and write your programs in C, you should use FreeBSD. FreeBSD comes with vi and C support built in, and you can try the new vim text editor if you buy a CD from a third party vendor which will allow you to install it in a jail managed by bhyve to protect you from any bugs running beta software may introduce into the expected behavior of your installation of FreeBSD.
Both OpenBSD and NetBSD come with XFCE, OpenBox, Firefox, mplayer (or equivalent). NetBSD pkgsrc may be a bit closer to Gentoo than OpenBSD ports/packages, but both are excellent package systems. You may get more games with NetBSD, including Minecraft and others but I haven't checked, so don't quote me on this.
If you are used to Gentoo, picking one or the other should not be too difficult, but OpenBSD, while a bit picky when it comes to hardware, is also a bit easier to use: if a piece of harware is supported, it is supported. Period. NetBSD often requires compiling a specific kernel to add this or that peripheral. OpenBSD usually supports everything out of the box, as long as it is in its harware compatibility list. Plus, there is this schweet schweet security goodness, now with LibreSSL gooey core!
Here is a quick example: I have had a motherboard die on me. I just ripped off the main HDD out, put it into a slightly different machine, and OpenBSD just picked up the harware changes, reconfigured, checked the filesystems and worked without making a fuss. I have used OpenBSD for many years in a second-hand laptop, where everything was supported, and it was a pleasure to use as my main machine. The update procedure is quick and easy, and a new version of the OS comes out every 6 months like clockwork.
So there you go, hope this helps.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Unless you like wasting time playing Flash games, I don't see how Flash is still relevant in 2014.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I use FreeBSD on all my desktop machines, and Gentoo on my laptop. Thankfully, eudev and USE="-systemd -consolekit -policykit" have kept my Gentoo install systemd-free. I tried FreeBSD 10.1 on my laptop, but poor battery life, suspend/resume issues, and X11 crashes forced me back to Gentoo.
The FreeBSD ports tree should have almost any FOSS project you're looking for. There was a period of time during the GCC->Clang transition where a lot of stuff didn't build, but those days are long gone. I'm not sure about Minecraft, but OpenJDK 7 and 8 work just fine. Mplayer is also in the ports tree, though I've long switched to mpv. VirtualBox, as well as Firefox and Chromium are also easily installed from ports. Flash can be made to work easily enough using FreeBSD's Linux compatibility layer. Not sure about OpenRA (I assume that's a game?), but you might have luck using the Linuxulator with that as well.
Encrypted root is possible using ZFS now. There's an option for it in the installer. Openbox, XFCE, Qt, are also all available from the ports tree. Honestly, I've never found a Linux program I used that wasn't in ports.
Coming from Gentoo, you'll feel right at home with FreeBSD. The system is much more easily configured, using a central, well documented config file (/etc/rc.conf). The handbook is great. In addition, compiling package from source is a much more user friendly experience than Gentoo. Compile-time options are presented to you via an ncurses menu the first time you install an application, and compile times are much faster with Clang compared to GCC.
You don't want to use BSD on the desktop.
I'm not saying you can't, all the usual stuff is in FreeBSD ports, there are distributions like PC-BSD that attempt to be good for desktops out of the box. If you really want to make it happen, you can. I've watched many Linux and FreeBSD folks spend countless hours making their desktops work.
Even going to a hard core sysadmin conference, you're going to see a sea of Mac's, some folks even using Windows, and a smattering of the hard core on Linux desktops. Why? To work with other people in their company or at other companies they need Skype, or WebEx to work. They need Excel to open the quotation for hardware, and flash player to view some mandatory training. They want resource browsing that just works so they can print to a printer in the office.
The reason BSD is great in the data center is lots of people use it for that. It's a network effect. You're standing on the shoulders of other folks. It's the same reason Windows and OS X dominate the user desktop market, the software you need just works on them, someone else has made it work. If I told you to replace all of your data center servers with Windows 8 boxes you'd probably laugh at me, and yet the opposite question does not provoke the same response!
So if you want to, try. It can be done, with much blood, sweat, and tears. You might find that fun, if so enjoy! You might work for a small enough company or even just yourself where you can mandate BSD, and LibreOffice and be happy. If so, you are extremely lucky. Otherwise as a long term, die hard, FreeBSD supporter I can tell you from 20+ years experience, you're going to just frustrate yourself.
Maybe I'm just in a bad mood and being an asshole, but I can't quite wrap my head around this post. "Hi everyone, I'm a random anonymous person on the Internet. For reasons I won't explain, I've decided I don't like Linux, and I want to try BSD. My needs are that I really want to play 3 specific games and run Firefox." I'm not even seeing where he actually asks a question, but timothy wants to know how Mr. Anonymous can fix his undisclosed Linux problems by moving to BSD.
Well, let's see. First, since you're apparently just running games, who cares what OS you're using? Does your current OS play those games? If yes, keep it. If not, look to see what operating system supports those games, and choose one of those operating systems to try out. Firefox and some kind of view player? I don't think that'll be much of a problem. Somehow the issue of hardware support isn't raised.
You know what? Use PC-BSD. AFIAK, it's basically the only BSD distribution, aside from Mac OSX, that's specifically targeting desktop use. Or maybe, since you only need a web browser and a couple of games, you should use whatever OS runs those games and stop worrying about it.
Everything the poster wants is covered by PC-BSD (pcbsd.org). they support Xfce (along with just about every other open source desktop), Firefox, Flash works out of the box, MPlayer and VLC are in the repositories. I haven't tried Minecraft, but it is a Java app so it probably works. If not, the poster could run Minecraft using Wine or the PC-BSD compatiiblity layer that allows PC-BSD users to run Linux software. VirtualBox is available too.
The only areas where PC-BSD ever gives me trouble are
1) Hardware support. The BSDs don't handle ATI cards as well as Linux does.
2) Closed source applications like Skype, Chrome or Steam either don't run or don't run smoothly.
But if your'e only running open source applications, then PC-BSD is excellent. Especially with its suport for ZFS and jails.
As an OpenBSD user, I suggest you look elsewhere. OpenBSD is likely too uncompromising for you. Think of it more as a research project for security focused development.
Flash just isn't an option on OpenBSD. Nor will it ever be. This is the case with several other mainstream "must-haves".
...is a Debian userland on top of the BSD kernel. It lets you use all the tools you're used to while also getting all the FreeBSD kernel goodness, like in-kernel ZFS, etc.
It's still a work in progress and not all packages are built for it, but it works really well and is very pleasant to use; plus you get dpkg and apt.
Of course, one possible downside is that you don't get the BSD userland, which has a flavour all of its own. Whether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing is purely a matter of personal taste.
I just installed FreeBSD on my laptop after 10.1 came out; the only thing that had stopped me before was UEFI support. That's there now, so no problem.
Most of the poster's questions can be answered with this post by a FaceBook engineer who does FreeBSD for a living. I followed it and the laptop works great, much better than it did under Debian. Hell, it is even more stable than Windows7 was, which used to always BSOD on wake up. I recommend giving MATE a spin, it is very nice. Some more good tips on that here (esp in regards to SLiM).
From my first week with FreeBSD, I can say this: there are very few things done automatically or in GUI, you have to go to CLI. A lot. However, in Linux I was always having the issue where I would need to try two or three different approaches to any issue until I found the fix. In FreeBSD, there is one solution, and it just works. I have all the eye candy (boot splash, nice login manager, beautiful desktop), and most of the utilities I had before.
I would not recommend PC-BSD. If the poster is anything like me, he should avoid it. I have been annoyed at Linux lately because it is always trying to predict what I want. This disease migrated from the Windows world via the "user friendly" distros and seems to have infected more "utility" distros lately. FreeBSD is like the Linux of ten years ago in this regard: it waits for me to tell it what to do, then it does it well. PC-BSD is just going to recreate the Linux rot for the poster.
Give BSD the time of day, and you'll realize that Linux has similar marketing hype around it as cloud (here come the flames). Sure it works great, but isn't as perfect as it's marketed to be
Good start with PC-BSD for desktop, but for the more serious server stuff, nothing can beat FreeBSD. Heck, it runs Linux binaries better than Linux does. Networking stack is better than Linux, the entire Operating System is maintained and not just the kernel, there's not one decision maker forcing his ideas onto others etc etc etc etc etc.
| which variety of BSD would you suggest?
OSX
I've been using BSD for a long time, both in OpenBSD and FreeBSD. FreeBSD is fantastic. I use mostly just plain Xorg and i3 window manager. With emacs, LaTeX and conkeror I can accomplish all that I need to do, and do it efficiently. However you can put as many bells and whistles on your installation as you want. True, you could do that with linux but there are some very important advantages with using FreeBSD:
1/ ZFS file system. This alone is worth switching to FreeBSD. If you don't know what it is, learn how to use it. What is extremely useful is doing "zfs send" of snapshots to another machine. Need more storage? Just add a disk to the pool. ZFS is very much production grade in FreeBSD 10.1.
2/ Jails. These are better than VirtualBox in my humble opinion, but they do have a learning curve. The advantage is putting each jail on a zfs filesystem where you can do snapshots of different stages of your application deployment and if something doesn't work you can simply rollback. Yes, I know you can do this with VMWare and the rest but jails allow me to access the filesystem directly in the command line and in general it is much more intuitive for my work habits. Note that you can also install jails of different flavors - for instance a debian jail where you can run everything just like it is on linux.
VirtualBox works just fine on FreeBSD, but I'll admit I haven't used it much.
3/ General simplicity of the system. Linux is fastly becoming as non-unix like as possible [though to be fair GNU is Not Unix]. Just a simple install of Ubuntu and you will see tons of processes running that you sometimes wonder what they are all up to. This may provide some utility for some people, but most people will never use those features. In FreeBSD I know exactly what each process is doing and it is very easy to turn off or enable as I desire. FreeBSD provides me control because I know the system, and the system is easier to know because it is much simpler and in my opinion more coherently designed.
4/ Much better documentation. FreeBSD (and BSD in general) has a good reputation for providing documentation. Almost everything you need is in the handbook. Also there is a lot of stability in the way things are done. Often in Linux the entire manner of doing things is changed from one version to another. Plus there are no monstrosities like NetworkManager which are opaque and not very well documented.
5/ More secure - a system is only as secure in as much as you know how it is working and what it is doing. In this case FreeBSD is more secure because I know more of what it is doing. With Ubuntu giving web searches every time you try to find a file on your machine, there is just asking for trouble.
6/ The system is more responsive. FreeBSD simple feels more 'alive' in the sense it is doing only what you want it to do. You don't have to wait for that useless application to stop doing what it is doing because it is not there. You don't need to wait for the indexing of the harddrive to give you back control of the system, as you decide when it should be done, etc. But I think even the UI elements are much smoother even on large desktops like KDE. The scrolling of windows for instance seems much more responsive than it is on linux, but that could be due to all sorts of factors.
As to your particular needs:
A/ Minecraft works just fine. http://minecraft.gamepedia.com...
B/ I have no idea, but an acquaintance tells me it works. In the forums they mention FreeBSD so someone must be using it.
C/ Mplayer works just fine, but I've seen a lot of people use VLC.
D/ Firefox works extremely well, though I use Conkeror which is simply a different shell to the same browser.
E/ Flash works with a multiple of different options.
F/ No idea to be honest about OpenRA. If there is source code I'm sure you could get it to run. At the very worst there is a linux-emulation layer.
G/ All the major Desktop Environments are in
I've done this myself as an experiment a few weeks ago. With the exception of FTB (the site has a jar file for it, so it'll likely work) everything you mentioned is available in ports. http://www.freshports.org/
There's also a binary packing system (pkg) but packages seem to randomly go missing there. A couple of weeks ago it was Xorg, until yesterday no Firefox. BTW can anyone explain the dynamics behind that?
The best way to get in is head first, install it on the least fancy PC you have. I'd strongly recommend FreeBSD and the handbook (This should be your first place of reference). http://www.freebsd.org/handboo... (take note of chapter 11). If you're a gentoo man you don't need PC-BSD.
Putting my view on *nix desktops aside (Are they worth the effort?), If there is a show stopper it'll probably be hardware support.
I just went through this a few days ago. Seems every year or two, I re-visit FreeBSD and ask myself, what would I miss if I switched entirely. A brief description of my encounters with FreeBSD 10.1 this week below:
/KVM, but VirtualBox could certainly fill this need.
1. ZFS cross platform worked beautifully. I have a multi-disk "ZFS on Linux - created" pool. I had no problems importing the pool with FreeBSD. And, as I switched back after running the pool under FreeBSD for a few days, I encountered no issues re-importing the pool under ZFS on Linux.
2. I have many KVM/qemu VMs. I'd love to run bhyve, but many VMs are Windows. It's not too hard to convert the images to boot up under VirtualBox. VirtualBox under FreeBSD works very well. For managing multiple VMs across several servers, I prefer virt-manager
3. While copying large vm images, I realized BSD's cp command doesn't support sparse files. One is left to use rsync. There is the linux/compat cp command which does support sparse, however this cp command crashed on me while copying large files.
4. Minecraft -- It worked great under FreeBSD -- just be sure to follow the directions to point to the correct Java runtime in your Minecraft profile.
5. I installed serveral other programs I use frequently (some binary installs from pkg and some source compiles): Chromium, Thunderbird, Blender, KDE, Gimp, Kdenlive, LibreOffice, OpenJDK , NVidia driver using a 3-headed display, VLC, MPV, HandBrake, FFMpeg, and others. All these worked fine. For the most part, my FreeBSD desktop was indistinguishable from my Linux desktop.
6. I set up several NFS4 exported mount points. No issues mounting these from multiple Linux hosts.
7. Webcam tested no issues. I had to install webcamd and follow the instructions.
8. Audio tested and worked well out of the box.
9. VNC server and clients worked fine.
Overall, I'm -- once again -- very impressed. Setup was fast ( even ports package compiles were very fast ). I'm familiar with FreeBSD, so that helps with the install time. Newcomers should always expect to put in extra time (As mentioned, PCBSD can help get you into a graphical environment quickly, so less of a learning curve). What would I miss if I switched over 100%??? I would miss KVM/virt-manager, native cp support of sparse files, native mkvmerge, and I'd love to get a native Eclipse IDE Luna port., and an intel 7260 Wifi driver. To be fair, I still need to give it more time. I might try again this weekend and coming week, since I'll have some free time. If you enjoy tinkering and learning the details of configuring your OS, FreeBSD is great. For a quick, get-it-up-and-working, PCBSD works very well.
FreeBSD pkg - http://pkg.freebsd.org/freebsd:10:x86:64/latest/All/
Traverse up a couple of folders in the first link if you're using a different release or x86_32. These are precompiles built with port's default settings, updated bi-weekly afaik
FreshPorts - http://www.freshports.org/
Software available in FreeBSD's ports system
Remind me to change where I hide the passwor.... ummmm I mean redecorate my office.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Also due to "a variety of reasons", I've also been looking at BSD on the desktop. Co-incidentally, I was just trying out the new PC-BSD release in a VirtualBox VM as this article appeared. It gave me a nice KDE desktop and so far looks pretty slick. The other stuff there like the package manager and control panel is enough to give Ubuntu a run for its money. I'll be interested in seeing how good it is in practice after a few weeks of real use.
Over the last year I've been slowly moving my software away from Linux. It's now mostly on FreeBSD or in the late stages of porting to BSD (adding BSD-specific features e.g. ZFS support, jail support). The desktop is really the only thing I still keep a Debian system around for. My last system will be a GNU/kFreeBSD jail instance on a FreeBSD server. I'll do a bare metal PC-BSD install in a few days and give it a try. If it works nicely, I think my last Debian unstable system will be removed in the near future. I was trying out (since 10.0) the newcons console and radeonkms stuff; mostly worked fine, and now with the new Xorg, no different than with Linux (maybe better, even, due to missing the worst parts of the freedesktoppy crap).
Linux in general, and Debian in particular, have been the major focus of my life over the last 14-16 years. It's been quite sad to let it go after the amount I've invested into it personally, but with systemd becoming unavoidable in unstable, it's no longer a system I wish to use or develop for, and developing went from being a joy to quite unpleasant. The enthusiasm I had was killed by several years of systemd flamewars and the last sparks were extinguished by bad interactions with a certain number of gnome and systemd people. It was clear over 18 months back this was an inevitable outcome unless something dramatically changed (which hasn't happened), and that my needs, goals and wishes were almost diametrically opposed to the new world order. systemd is the straw which broke the proverbial camel's back. Over the last few months I've had a few bug reports for my software. All due to systemd changing how the system works fairly fundamentally, and yet every upstream is supposed to work around this. This is code which is pretty much just using POSIX features directly out of APUE (Stevens). The lack of care for backward compatibility is unbelievable for such a fundamental part of the system, and altering the behaviour of basic POSIX features even moreso.
How the hell does this absolute crap get posted?
You can pretty much run all linux applications on freebsd/pc-bsd. Plus now, there is amd driver support in 10. freebsd requires something like 3-5 steps to install and configure the DE's like Kde, instructions are online https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/x11-wm.html. If you don't want to go through these steps just install pc-bsd which is easier but there are reports it runs pretty sluggish. Don't run an OS for the hype but for the applications you need. For me, now, I'm sticking with windows 7 for the applications and maybe moving to windows 10 in the future.
Off the topic. I'm looking at kde 3.xx pics and it seems to me it's a lot easier on the eyes, looks sharper, and fonts are excellent compared to kde 4.xx. I have run linux a few times in the past with kde 3.xx and I always remembered how nice it looked. Kde plasma 5 looks pretty damn horrid, trying to copy the windows 8 flat colors.
Get involved with the Gentoo FreeBSD project, which aims to bring the benefits of Gentoo to BSD:
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_FreeBSD
Seriously. This is getting silly. If people want to flee the main Distro's because they think that Debian is getting stupid. Can they please just fork Debian and improve on it? Apt-get works really well. I just feel that a ton of people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The Linux kernel does not mandate systemd. There is no reason to ditch Linux. If the problem is distributions mandating systemd then it is time to start a distro that removes systemd and Gnome. Let's not kid ourselves here. Right now it's Gnome and systemd that are pushing this move on everyone. If people don't like it, they should be looking to fork a distribution and fixing the issue. Maybe brand themselves as a POSIX/SYS-V init Compliant distribution.
FreeBSD is pretty user friendly - if you like ArchLinux, you'll like FreeBSD. The community's good, and the manuals are good. It pretty much has all the software you named. I never tried Minecraft, but I think since it's a Java app, it would run anyway. If not, FreeBSD has support to run 32-bit Linux software at native (sometimes better) speed. (It does it with a kernel module that maps Linux system calls directly to FreeBSD ones. You can also install fedora 10 or centos 6 user-lands, to support your software).
The answer to all your questions is "it is there". For any future questions of the same kind, go to http://www.freshports.org/ and search for the package that you want.
"...browsing the web sans-flash is still a pain..." Is it? Which sites now require Flash? I recently reinstalled my OS and decided to forgo adding Flash as a little experiment to see how well it would work. I've managed 3 weeks so far without it.
Positives: YouTube works better in HTML5. Flash-based ads do not appear in uTorrent.
Negatives: There was some news site where the video wouldn't play, but it's a 50/50 chance whether that was due to Flash or Noscript. In any case, I'm used to those not working, and had no problem passing it by.
While I think that most of the posts to use FreeBSD or PC-BSD are spot on, I think I should cover what you shouldn't use in the BSD world due to your requirements.
My own os, MidnightBSD, does not have virtualbox. The nvidia binary drivers work from FreeBSD on it, but that won't be the case forever.
MirBSD wouldn't support at lot of the software you mentioned and doesn't have recent java support for minecraft.
OpenBSD might work, but you would have to check on a few packages.
NetBSD is probably your next best bet after FreeBSD due to the wide variety of packages.
DragonFly is weak on packages, although they're working on it.
FreeBSD does offer disk encryption. Note if you use encrypted swap, there is a massive performance hit. I used to have this a default in MidnightBSD up to 0.4 and it was not a pretty picture on server hardware. Sometimes you'd get panics if there was too much swap pressure with it.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
A few things on that list are where BSD is lagging behind, just like linux is lagging behing on ZFS. Last I looked Virtualbox was not working at all. However with X you don't have to run the software on the same machine and the one you sit in front of.
There's plenty of stuff where there are linux binaries available but nothing for BSD - however so long as they are 32 bit there's an emulation layer that's pretty solid, even for flaky Adobe stuff or antivirus scanners written to be run on linux. I should get around to installing the old loki games on a netbook I've put FreeBSD10 on.
Everything you mention runs fine on FreeBSD.
They have the largest maintained ports collection out there.
Search for whatever else you use at the link below.
If it's there, you can use it easily with ports.
If it's not there, it'll still run fine, you just have to compile it.
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/
Wow, add that to systemd and pulseaudio and it's almost looking like he's on the MS payroll to break stuff in linux. However, the reality is likely to be that he has a vision to change linux into something different to what it is now which of course is not going to be painless and seamless - hence the annoyance with pulseaudio during the first few years of development and the annoyance with NetworkManager until relatively recently. NetworkManager may have pissed me off at times on fixed systems (and earlier in development) but it's now a pretty nice thing to have on laptops.
If you want to completety change the compartmentalised idea of linux (where you change settings and they stay changed) to something very interdependant there's going to be a pile of glitches on the way to pretending to be a Mac. Complaints about beta software going into distros are fairly pointless since it's not going to get much better without a lot of people hammering at it and finding the problems. It does however mean that there is a very large and widening gap between what's acceptable in an office environment (RHEL6 or Fedora13 from 2010) and the cutting edge (Fedora20).
with windows 7 professional
wierd, it does everything I want
I don't have to worry about hardware - it all works
There are usually free software versions of about everything that just run
there are so many windows users that if you have any problem, you just google and you find the answer...3 years ago, problem with help gave some cryptic error mesage Fx009htkd or some such...google led me to a guy in Australia with a free patch...
But hey, I can't spend 5 hours configuring the router - what am I gonna do with all my free time, something useful maybe ?
Wow, add that to systemd and pulseaudio and it's almost looking like he's on the MS payroll to break stuff in linux.
No it is an effort to make things usable, the problem with pretty much every Linux distro is that any application can do the things it wants in any way that it wants so you end up with an absolute mess of different underlying libraries and subsystems all trying to do the same thing. Audio for instance, has ALSA, JACK, FFADO, PulseAudio, etc and thats great for freedom but a complete fail to the user because they can't even get a reliable software master volume.
Having choice in every single aspect of what you do is great from a certain point of view but ultimately it means nothing is ever properly integrated together, the whole thing is a disjoint mess. The UNIX philosophy works for chaining together many of the tiny utils but computing has evolved since that idea came about over 40 years ago, things have changed and computers are used for many different things nowadays. For those mainframe/server admins doing the same old thing they always have then I see why there is resistance to change, Im not even suggesting any of Poetterings' creations are the right way but the community hasnt come up with any decent alternative.
Also, you may find that you need Flash a few times per year. Most Flash is ads, splash pages, and other stuff that's not useful to me. What I do is install Flash in a browser that I rarely use. My daily surfing isn't exposed to Flash vulnerabilties, but those few times per year I want to use Flash I just open the Flash-enabled browser.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With FreeBSD you've got to be a little bit more picky about the hardware. I can highly recommend using an nVidia video card. This will allow you to get full OpenGL acceleration (for Minecraft) and h264/vc1 acceleration in mplayer with libvdpau (makes sure to build the port manually, as that option is not selected by default). Flash is a little more finicky, as it uses the Linux emulation layer. Fortunately the internet is moving to html5 video which is well supported by Firefox/Chrome on FreeBSD. So youtube works fine without flash.
I've been using FreeBSD on my media box since about version 6, and on various servers professionally as well as at home.
Also, ZFS fucking rules.
> The other day, I needed to change the gateway address of my router, since a Netgear had replaced a Belkin, which was toast. I tried editing /etc/resolv.conf
Setting the network gateway in the resolver config? Would that ever work in any version of any OS?
As my desktop is a powerful laptop, the show-stopper for me was touchpad support. The module responsible for touchpads in FreeBSD is very out of date and does not work for synaptic touchpads on all the HP Elitebooks I have tried. My current is an Elitebook. Poor touchpad support may sound like a minor thing however when using the laptop keyboard a ton, it's a big problem; too many ghost taps with no way to configure the drivers. Only option is to disable the touchpads which for me is far from ideal. Besides this issue, FreeBSD does it all. Note that whole disk encryption is not possible with ootb Installers for PC-BSD last time I checked. Several folks on FreeBSD team is recommending avoiding whole disk encryption and going to alternative methods. If you are super paranoid about security and can afford sacrifice a bunch of functionality, then OpenBSD is the one to target.
I just encountered a link about refracta. It turns out to be absurdly easy to fork Debian, at least for now.
Refracta is rather close to Debian testing. Its home page
is http://www.ibiblio.org/refract...
At http://forums.debian.net/viewt... it is described as
(for testing, without libsystemd0, it's pinned).
It even uses the Debian repositories!
Are there any other forks?
-- hendrik
Notice the recent takedown of 'Barbie Computer Engineer"?
Oh yeah.
The point is that BSD and all the flavors require knowledge.
The great thing about the BSD communities is information is there for you to turn into knowledge.
That is why I am taking some macppc's to a new life as NetBSD Macppc.
To do this I must first bootstrap myself then bootstrap the machines. :-D
It is all online for anyone to do. No Apple iTunes or App Store!
Yeah.
"So for a variety of reasons (some related to recent events, some ongoing for a while) I've kinda soured on Linux and have been looking at giving BSD a shot on the desktop.. What's the most painless way to transition to BSD for this constellation of uses, and which variety of BSD would you suggest?"
It would be informative if you shared with us the reasons for your disenchantment with 'Linux', and what improvement BSD on the desktop would be?
"There's been many bold comments on slashdot about moving away from Linux, so I suspect I'm not the only one asking these questions"
This wouldn't be a wind-up by any chance?
I tried migrating to FreeBSD about 6 years ago. It seemed like an elegant and secure computing platform.
Like previous posters, the initial installation went fairly easy and then I spent a couple of weeks learning about FreeBSD, trying to import programs or do something . I do not have a computer science college degree.
I got interested in understanding the programming and design of some aspect of the BSD operating system. From a neighbor I borrowed the Marshal Kirk McKusick BSD book. The book recommended that all readers have a certain level of computer science education. In the next chapter the author began using a series of very technical phrases that completely stopped my progress in understanding the book.
That experience with studying BSD unix in the liberal arts manner of picking up a book and figuring it out... and failing eventually speaks to the BSD dilemma: On the one hand, FreeBSD is an extraordinary piece of software and design. On the other hand FreeBSD has a crusty heritage of important, long lasting and very exacting technical ideas expressed in low level C code. It seems to me that FreeBSD predates the simple and brilliant language and ideas of teachers like Niklaus Wirth, author of Pascal. FreeBSD doesn't use the language of set theory but mathematician Leslie Lamport finds set theory very important to computation.
So in a hand waving way, how about this as a thought proposition: FreeBSD is an elegant program system with an extremely deep design roots dating to the early days of solid state computers. The inelegant fog that threatens to explode the Debian movement is Systemd. Systemd is this modern program whose design and implementation is very disturbing. I'm stuck in the old guy fog: if it is not init and it isn't SysV init well what is it?
Yeah, there are some websites you might want to go to that still need Flash or some equally ugly support to get video to work. Right now I've been trying to get SliTaz Linux to let me watch YouTube as well as finding the right operating system and VMware settings to make the display resizeable, but I'm also trying out DragonFly BSD (still at the "installing Xorg" stage.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm looking for a small desktop BSD, something that runs Xorg and fits in a GB or less of disk, so I can run multiples of them as virtual machines. I need some kind of browser that can run YouTube, plus ssh, and otherwise I don't much care what it does, but small disk is good.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Why can't people read beyond the first sentence before writing a two paragraph reply?
But fleeing from Linux to BSD doesn't solve the problem, that's just running away from it. If the major BSD distros decided to incorporate a systemd-like system then what?
Then it will be time to fork Linus...
J/K
However, maybe someone should give the Linux POSIX APIs some loving - and implement a new improved non-systemd distro, and add good support for features/apps that were lost in the 'Great Systemd Landrush of 2014' (basically fork projects that decide only to support systemd - if they are something we gotta have on BSD and Linux).
The one thing I think we can depend upon is the Linux Kernel itself...everything else is questionable given limited resources; if you care about having a given feature that is threatened - put your money/sweat where your mouth is - and support it.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Twelve years ago I grew tired of trying to make Linux work on a Desktop. I noticed that when I wanted to have some work done I ended up using Slackware. Slackware uses the BSD init type, instead of SVR4 most of Linux systems were using at that time (and that is now being replaced with an upstart or systemd). I also noticed FreeBSD discussion forums that had simple instructions *that worked* for configuring things like switching keyboard layouts in Xwindow. ;-) ). Note that this was time where KDE was at its peak - around version of 3.8.something.
So I have tried FreeBSD 4.something. It worked great. When 4.8 came along I was already proficient and I had the best desktop ever. I was never this satisfied with a Linux desktop before.
The documentation is fantastic. Whatever you need to configure, just open handbook at the appropriate chapter and follow the script. (It was recommended at the time to do yourself a favor and make csh your default shell instead of Bash you wanted to use as a Linux refugee
Installing software was super easy, just use binary ports - ports that somebody else had built on a pointy-hat server farm, so you do not have to spend [many] dozens of machine-hours compiling stuff like KDE.
For smaller stuff, you just identified port you wanted to use, changed into that directory within port structure, typed make install and watched the magic happen.
Fast forward a few years. I grew tired of having to tinker with a computer for a month to configure all the little things, such as Flash every time I wanted to do a major update from scratch. At that time installing things like Flash was highly non-trivial, you had to use Linux version on top of some compatibility layer that emulated RedHat system for Linux calls. So I started to use PC-BSD and I was happy again.
Fast forward a few more years again. FreeBSD kernel of certain generation of major release had problems with my motherboard, and my existing system built on previous major release was getting obsolete. My Flash was old and other important ports couldn't be updated to a desired version. So I went looking for a Linux distro that I wouldn't have to fight with.
I have discovered Mint Linux. Out-of-box it came configured JUST the way I like it. I just needed to install a few little things, like [g]vim built from the most recent vanilla sources, Krusader, and a few others.
I do try FreeBSD out from time to time when an interesting release appears. I am always disappointed with the hardware compatibility. My very good friend runs it as his main desktop at work with a lightweight desktop manager. Besides other things he uses it to host a bunch VMs in Qemu. We (the company I work for) also use FreeBSD for various little stations and small servers for operators in industrial system.
Let me tell you, FreeBSD ain't what it used to be around what I perceive as a "FreeBSD Golden Age" [4.8Release]. Things aren't backward compatible and releases get old fairly quickly. When shell-shock (that nasty bug in Bash) came out I was very surprised that you can't patch an older system - you have to install a fairly recent release. I know, the default shell is tcsh, but some [web]server ports require bash.
I think the final nail in the anti-system movement [a proud member] was Torvalds' non-chalant, I-can't-be-bothered-with-such-trivialities response when asked about this virus. I can't be the only one that was stunned by his attitude, assuring the rapid takeover of Linux by the Red Hat / NSA consortium.
They will be coming for your kernel one day, Linus, but there will be no one left to speak up.
Complete and utter unintelligible bullshit.
Why the hell people keep playing minecraft when there is the open source free alternative available? http://www.minetest.net/
You go all the trouble of getting a completely different OS but can't get rid of a microsoft java game?
Minetest with addons is doing everything the proprietary game does and more. Plus, it doesn't need java and performs much better.
Leaving games aside (steam), Freebsd is perfectly suited for a desktop. Yes, lets get rid of systemd once and for all.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
I'm also a Gentoo user and have been thinking the same things. I did try FreeBSD on one of my computers and I liked it to an extent, but I'm also a BOINC user and nVidia refuses to offer opencl support.
So, I just switched to KDE to sidestep Gnome3/systemd. I don't like it as much as Gnome2, but systemd doesn't agree with me (tried it, too).
If nVidia ever gets a clue and supports FBSD properly, I will definitely switch at least one computer to get more proficient at it while contemplating the switch two the two main desktops.
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
I see how you got there. That's the address of your _name_server_. It just so happens that your router (gateway) can also serve as a DNS server. You could have put 8.8.8.8 as your name server, or better yet the name servers of your ISP, and it would work fine.
The gateway is set elsewhere, and needs to be the IP of your router. You'd never go to resolv.conf to set the _gateway_.
I could do that. Of course I already have both Firefox and Chrome installed anyway, but there is no "install a separate browser for one plugin".
In this particular case, either way is probably fine. For security I tend to think in terms of principles, though. Which is a better principle
a) Open a hole, and put a bandaid over the hole
b) Don't open a hole
Hint - Windows does a lot of choice a).
what the hell is going on with the PCBSD project???
I too saw that touchpads didn't work, which is what delayed my migration from Windows 8 to PC-BSD. I had to buy a separate mouse and stick it into a USB port. But I like it this way - under Windows 8, touchpad constantly came in the way, and even touchfreeze didn't fix things completely. So given how buggy the touchpad support could have been, I'm actually glad that it's not supported at all.
Particularly the current generation of touchpads where a single touchpad covers both the touchpad as well as the left & right click buttons. Oh, and without any button to disable touchpads altogether.
BSD-Based, supports everything you want, great hardware...
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism