Slashdot Mirror
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?
The only problem with that is that Macs probably represent all of the anti-Unix nonsense he's trying to get away from by fleeing to one of the pure BSDs.
I also can't imagine a Gentoo user being satisfied with Mac hardware. Gentoo is kind of the polar opposite of the Apple mentality. The end user has limited control and is presented with limited questionable choices.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
So is there a point to using OpenBSD if you install flash? I'm not trolling, I'm curious and open to the fact that there is almost certainly something I haven't considered, but running OpenBSD and then installing flash feels like spending a million bucks on a safe, and then writing the combination code to open it on a sticky note attached to the backside of a painting hung on the wall next to the safe's door.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
| which variety of BSD would you suggest?
OSX
Maybe if you only want clicky clicky ways of changing things. Otherwise there is still a full terminal and BASH installed, and you can update many many system settings through the CLI. I am using a terminal right now as a matter of fact.
Then there is the questionable applescript / automator scripts you can make. I say questionable because I don't know if they can change any deep system things, but automator at least can do some pretty neat tricks... I don't know if Linux has something comparable, other than shell scripts which I can still run in OS/X.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!