Meet UbuntuBSD, UNIX For Human Beings

prisoninmate writes: What's ubuntuBSD? Well, it's not that hard to figure out yourself, but just in case you're not sure, we can tell you that ubuntuBSD promises to bring the power of the FreeBSD kernel to Ubuntu Linux. The best part of using the FreeBSD kernel is that you'll end up using the famous Z File System, or ZFS. Xfce is also included along with the popular Firefox, LibreOffice, and Ubuntu Software Center apps. ubuntuBSD is inspired by the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project, it is hosted on SourceForge, and has been created by Jon Boden.

Comments

Hosted On SourceForce?

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have put that sentence first so I would not have wasted 5 minutes reading everything before it.

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[cfalcon]

There's nothing wrong with Sourceforge. That's a 2015-era complaint, get modern!

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[KGIII]

And what did they do about it?

Methinks your latter sentence could be directed towards you. But I suspect you'll refuse to acknowledge that.

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[goranb]

get modern

oh, sorry... thought I read "get modem"... *blush*

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[m.alessandrini]

But I think it was to the users to opt for putting malware into their installers, not Sourceforge inserting it behind one's back, isn't it?

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[DrXym]

There's nothing wrong with Sourceforge except for the fact that they hijacked "abandoned" open source projects in order to bundle crapware into the installer, tried to persuade popular projects to bundle crapware, placed fake download links on project download pages, created fear distrust in their community, and failed to keep up with rival hosting services.

So nothing wrong at all. Even if they're trying to make amends or correct these things, it's too late. The trust is gone. Most active projects have decamped to the likes of Github.

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Look again. The GIMP for Windows had one heck of a time trying to re-establish control, because they wanted it _deleted_.

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[kuzb]

When sourceforge stops injecting adware in to the binaries you can say there's nothing wrong with sourceforge.

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[DrXym]

Let's go through your points. a) They placed the ads and they are responsible for what ads they let through. They could have told their customers to knock it off or moved the ads somewhere less confusing. They did none of these things so they are at fault. b) They assumed ownership of abandoned projects (even projects which had actually just moved elsewhere) and bundled crapware. This is not hard to confirm. c) They also approached popular projects and begged them to bundle crapware d) so this was all part of an intentional push to raise revenues.

As for subversion, it's a perfectly acceptable source control system and certainly better than CVS. And in a lot of respects it is easier to comprehend than git, especially for people who are used to centralized source control systems. But it still sucks compared to git particularly on distributed projects, or projects where branching and merging are used extensively.

Re:Hosted On SourceForce?

[secretsquirel]

Well at least if you buy PC's directly from the Microsoft store they only come bundled with the Microsoft crapware, so I'll give them half credit.

Re: Hosted On SourceForce?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, last month?

Why would anyone want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried to run FreeBSD in the past. Hardware was poorly supported with frequent system crashes. Software was poorly supported; many packages and ports simply wouldn't install or build. The ports collection, often touted as a great benefit of BSD, often failed to properly build software. Because ports are built as root so they can be installed, I once had a port try to build and install a rootkit in the process. There are far fewer BSD users, so bugs are infrequently reported and the lack of developers means that bugs often go unfixed. Ubuntu isn't perfect, but why would anyone want to bring this experience to Linux?

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny. I'm an OpenBSD user and I'm saying this seriously -- you've just summarized my experience with Linux. I tried using a Linux distro and after lots of pain came back to OpenBSD which has been so much easier to use (once you get past the bare bones installation. I'll admit).

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[0100010001010011]

Hardware was poorly supported with frequent system crashes.

This is the trick I've figured out with FreeBSD: They don't support crap hardware. The best hardware support comes from companies that pay developers to make FreeBSD drivers. (See RealTek vs Intel ethernet drivers). If you look at who the core users of FreeBSD are and look at who sponsors development it's mostly servers.

For most of my desktops I've returned to server hardware anyway. Whitebox builds were fun when I was poor and my time was free. But after the N'th time of dicking around with figuring out why my Motherboard and RAM won't play nice or the monster heat sink I added scrubbed off traces I'd rather just buy a machine that's supported.

Buy good hardware. Get good results.

so bugs are infrequently reported and the lack of developers means that bugs often go unfixed.

I've had the opposite experience. Bugs are so infrequent that if it's not a PEBKAC error then the FreeBSD guys can usually drill down to the bottom of it quick. If it's a problem someone else has experienced then the fix is most likely out there already anyway. Google will return results with the error I'm having instead of threads of noise from the Ubuntu forums.

often failed to properly build software

[Pics or it didn't happen].

Even if you somehow screwed the system up so bad that ports wouldn't build, there's always pkg.

I once had a port try to build and install a rootkit in the process.

[Citation Needed]

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run FreeBSD and I can attest that nothing you say is remotely true.

In other words you full of shit, but you already knew that.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[convolvatron]

Why would anyone want this?

FreeBSD is hardly a perfect system. But why would I want to cripple it further by making it look like Ubuntu?

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Bruce Perens]

They don't support crap hardware.

:-)

It would help me believe this if you could point out "crap" hardware, explain why it's crap, and show that BSD developers decided not to support it because it was crap, with reference to mailing list messages.

Otherwise, it might be better to say "the developers support what they had at a point in time and now only buy what is supported.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[invictusvoyd]

Imagine Funity . Unity for FreeBSD .. But thats just for joke sake . No one's gonna see the kernel anyways .. except that odd webcam you bought which just isn't running ..

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Masked Coward]

I'm typing this message from FreeBSD right now, on a Thinkpad laptop with Intel graphics & wireless.

It really depends on your hardware. With the right laptop it's a great system, and in my opinion much clearer than Linux.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[epyT-R]

For most of my desktops I've returned to server hardware anyway. Whitebox builds were fun when I was poor and my time was free. But after the N'th time of dicking around with figuring out why my Motherboard and RAM won't play nice or the monster heat sink I added scrubbed off traces I'd rather just buy a machine that's supported.

Sounds more like pebkac issues than anything else. I'd agree with this for building a server farm or datacenter, but for personal machines it's overkill and ludicrously expensive unless you're willing to live with 10 year old technology from ebay.

Buy good hardware. Get good results.

This applies anywhere regardless of method of acquisition.

Otherwise, I agree with your experience of freebsd. It's a solid system that has drivers for good hardware.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Infidel! Wash your mouth out with soap immediately! Didn't you know that BSD is perfect and not to be criticized?

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Darinbob]

It's how gamers think too. If it works for him then the fault must lie with the other person's system. No one wants to admit that it worked for them because they were lucky.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Ah, I know this one. We had the same problem when Solaris came out with an x86 version back in the early 2000s. These drive-by linux users downloaded the ISO as if it were the distro-of-the-week, attempted to install it on whatever random crap hardware they had, and then loudly declared that Solaris sucked because they couldn't get something or other to work properly. The problem isn't the OS, the problem is between the keyboard and chair.

When you install a serious OS, you first must do something very unfamiliar and disconcerting. First, you must look at the list of supported hardware. The importance of this cannot be underestimated. If your hardware is not on the list, then the OS will not support it. Most linux fans come from Windows, which supports just about every bit of random junk Taiwanese hardware in the world. Other OS's aren't like that.

After you look at the hardware list, you then must do another thing that is totally counter-intuitive and out of most people's experience - go and buy supported hardware. They won't do this, they install the OS anyway, and surprise surprise when something doesn't work because the documentation clearly states it's not supported, guess what happens? They get frustrated, feel insulted, and begin screaming loudly online that the OS sucks ass. They wonder why they heard so many great things about the software. If it's so fucking great, why doesn't their wireless trackball and webcam from 1997 work seamlessly like under Windows? This happened so often back in the day with Solaris x86 that we had a slang term for the people who did it, though I forget what it was.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[AmiMoJo]

The example that the GP used and which I've seen before is Realtek. Now, it's true that Realtek hardware is kinda crap... I seem to recall a comment in the driver about "redefining the low end". It's certainly not high performance, high reliability stuff, but it also gets the job done perfectly adequately most of the time and it's only people in need of high performance who care.

So in this case "crap" is defined as "wasn't good enough to attract any developers, and the manufacturer isn't interested in BSD either".

Re: Why would anyone want this?

[undefinedreference]

His position is completely accurate. Linux hackers will work tirelessly to reverse engineer some pile of shit and write something comparable to support it, while *BSD people simply ignore it for being closed crap. All decent hardware from reasonable vendors is well supported in the BSDs.

Beyond that, they don't really target desktops much beyond the FreeBSD distro (even then, it's not as good as a Linux experience on most hardware). If you want uptime, you do not run Linux.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[armanox]

I actually like Unity - it is one of the big reasons I moved to Ubuntu from Fedora (that, and LTS versions rather then the short life cycle of Fedora). It is like having a modern WindowMaker or AfterStep.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you live in a world of software and don't poke around in device driver code it's easy to think that hardware is somehow perfect and not prone to bugs like software... They only get to make it once right? intel and amd with all their recourses can't make a bug free processor... every single one has bugs, they just turn off the buggy bits. There are plenty of other buggy hardware out their but in the form of peripherals, this doesn't mean it wont work at all, just like software, sometimes the bug is in the form of a race condition so it's not always present, or sometimes it's more obvious and needs hacky driver code to work at all.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[armanox]

Yup. I remember how surprised I was when I installed Solaris 10 on my Inspiron 8100 (P3 1GHz, 512MB RAM, GeForce 2) and everything worked out of the box - GPU acceleration, Flash Player, MP3 codecs, sound - you name it, it worked perfect. I picked the system after checking the HCL and deciding to give it a shot despite all the stories I was hearing about Solaris sucking. Worked just as well as Ubuntu (6.06) did on the box, and all the proprietary stuff worked without a hitch! It was beautiful. I've run Solaris 11 as a desktop, and almost bought a Toshiba laptop when they were shipping with OpenSolaris as an option just to have everything work (Solaris 11 almost works on my laptops, just a few issues with power management that forced me off of it. I was amazed when it saw my battery and WiFi)

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[ZeRu]

It's how gamers think too. If it works for him then the fault must lie with the other person's system. No one wants to admit that it worked for them because they were lucky.

Confirming. I once complained that a certain game isn't compatibile with my graphics card on Steam forums and most replies consisted of rude and immature trolling.

Re: Why would anyone want this?

[Antique Geekmeister]

Except for graphics tablets, many mice and game controllers, laptop video and audio chipsets, laptop power control systems, and bleeding edge graphics cards. It's why FreeBSD was a good choice for the Apple kernel: they had control of the hardware and could judiciously invest driver development in only those components they actually used.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Antique Geekmeister]

To avoid systemd, I suspect. Since systemd only works with the Linux kernel, and so far has produced a great deal of difficulty in return for its very aggressive re-engineering of the entire Linux back end infrastructure, it seems very very reasonable to try simply replacing the kernel to get a clean divorce from the systemd infrastructure.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[drinkypoo]

I wanted to use OpenBSD on my netbook for secure mobile computing, but they denied the patch that someone submitted for my wifi hardware on specious grounds so that they wouldn't have accept his patch — they claimed that getting some values from a Linux driver was a copyright issue when it has been conclusively proven that it hasn't. So I can't use it without buying additional hardware, so I installed Linux.

No joke, someone actually submitted a working patch, and they denied it on bullshit grounds. They don't want decent hardware support.

Last time I built a box just for OpenBSD it choked hard on "supported" NICs and failed to route my packets, almost costing me a job. Admittedly, that was over ten years ago. Still not going down that road again.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[damaki]

I had issues with a dedicated 3Com pci board on FreeBSD, had to switch to OpenBSD for the damn thing to work. Never had issues with this card on any other OS. I could not even think how a network card driver could be so f*cked up on an OS. I mean, if the damn driver does not work, as automated tests should show (did they even have automated non-regression tests by then, around 2004?), why was it in the kernel? It should have been disabled and documented.
So I do not think the issue is about crap hardware. It's about spotty support of specific pieces of hardware.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you fucking serious? You're suggesting he basically maintain his own spin of the kernel because some idiots without any sense of how people actually want to use computers don't think the patch is useful enough to integrate upstream? Fuck me, people here really do live in their own bubble.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[jellomizer]

"They don't support crap hardware."
I find that to be a lame excuse for things not working. It is excusing the problem that BSD doesn't have the markets interest that Linux and Windows has in order for a diverse set of drivers to be made for a wide range of Systems.

Most system with "Crap Hardware" will work perfectly well on other os for years and last well beyond the useful life of the device. Unless you want to build your PC by yourself (something much more difficult if you want a Laptop) you normally need to deal with what the vendor gives you in terms of hardware. Being that most vendors really don't care about making a FreeBSD based Desktop solution you will not find too many that meet this requirement fully, and will undoubtedly cheap out on some particular part so you will feel good at getting such a device below $1,000 vs above. Where on Windows and Linux you wouldn't really notice as it will be detected and works, at least partially. While BSD it will just fail to recognize the device.

I am not basing BSD Systems, I actually love working on them when the hardware works with them. However for Personal Computing they suck, because they have this elitist attitude towards hardware.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[0100010001010011]

if you could point out "crap" hardware, explain why it's crap,

If the vendor doesn't think it is worth their time to develop drivers for it then it must not be good enough to develop drivers for.

I already gave the RealTek vs Intel Ethernet drivers.

Another is Nvidia vs AMD/ATI. I hand Nvidia money. Nvidia hands me a working video driver. No reverse engineering needed. No "here's a bunch of specs, write your own driver".

Yet another is Supermicro and Intel motherboards vs consumer boards. Turns out Intel and Supermicro designs and develops motherboards with full driver support. Most consumer boards I've seen will toss in Realtek drivers and a bunch of other cheap chips to save a penny or so with the end result being no driver support in Linux or FreeBSD. Windows drivers are still hit or miss.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[0100010001010011]

While BSD it will just fail to recognize the device.

It may not recognize the device as "something" but it will always recognize the device. Any time I have a problem with a USB device on Windows I'll plug it into a FreeBSD machine and it'll tell me exactly what it is, no obfuscation

However for Personal Computing they suck,

My wife's laptop aside, in which she's happy with Windows 8 everything in my house is FreeBSD of some sort. Down to my HTPC which is FreeBSD running Kodi. All of the sound devices, including SPDIF out, are recognized. It was easier to setup than Kodi on Windows.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[AmiMoJo]

I've tried both (I run a FreeBSD server now, Linux is relegated to a VM for now) and I'd say you are both kinda right.

Hardware - On Linux people expect things like their GPU to be fully accelerated and capable of running games and a fancy desktop. On BSD you just expect desktop support at resolutions you monitor supports with some reasonable 2D acceleration, but your network card damn well better benchmark close to line speed.

Software - It's pot luck, popular stuff is well supported on both platforms but anything else is down to how well someone cares to maintain it. Much like Windows really, where it depends how much of an asshat the developer is and if they provided a nice .zip or a badly coded installer.

One thing I'd say about Ubuntu is that it's kinda bloated. Much worse than Windows. You get a massive amount of crap installed by default, and unless you uninstall it all manually it's gonna want updates too. Uninstalling is a bit of a minefield as there seem to be some dependency tracking issues and I've heard (but not tested personally) that upgrading the OS can fail if you install certain things.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[MeNeXT]

I seriously do not understand your post. I've ran (and still run) FreeBSD on 1000's of systems for over 10 years. On supported hardware I have yet to have a crash without hardware failure. Rock solid. Now on the latest and greatest newest hardware which was not yet supported I had the same success as Windows, Linux and Mac (which means luck was involved). I have one system on 6.3 which the client is too cheap to upgrade which is still running. Gets rebooted when there is a power failure. I have old systems, New systems. Used systems.

In most cases it's simpler to fix problems on FreeBSD than any other.

Linux has a great deal of noise in the forums.

On windows it sometimes requires a reinstall but this has mainly been resolved. There is very little pertinent documentation to fix problems. When equipment ages support just drops. Very hard to find drivers for older equipment.

Mac works well until Apple decides to change something then the support dies. If you invest time doing it Apples way you may need to invest time finding a new solution when Apple changes it's mind.

For me Linux and the BSD's are interchangeable some solutions work better with Linux others with FreeBSD. But one thing I can definitely say is the FreeBSD is rock solid.

My intention is not to start a flame war with this comment. I just find less politics/special agenda with FreeBSD than any other OS. It's like Debian you can always find a solution that works for you.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[clonehappy]

I agree that is complete bullshit, but your experience mirrors every Linux experience I've had in the last decade. I try and try to get basic things to work, and they just never do. Actually, Linux worked *better* for me 10 years ago than it has in the last few, so I just stick to BSD. I don't dislike Linux by any means, it just doesn't work for me.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[squiggleslash]

but why would anyone want to bring this experience to Linux?

They're not. There isn't any Linux in this. This is about bringing the Ubuntu experience to FreeBSD. EVERY single thing you've talked about is something this project is trying to solve. Absolutely every thing.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[drinkypoo]

Why didn't you just apply the patch?

I tried, but alas, the sources had changed too much between when it was contributed and working and when I tried it a few years later for the patch to apply, or to be simple to adapt to the new code. If the patch had applied cleanly, or not taken too much bashing, I would have given it a go. If they had simply accepted the patch in the first place, then it would likely still be working when I wanted it, since it was only changes to an existing driver.

I'm not much of a programmer, and can admit that readily enough, but I shouldn't have to be in order to use a common NIC. And with Linux, I don't.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Eunuchswear]

Brilliant, jump out of the SystemD frying pan into the Upstart fire.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Bruce Perens]

You haven't given any technical explanation of why RealTek hardware isn't worth the effort, and on this page it shows support in BSD for half a dozen model numbers from RealTek. You must be talking about a different model? There could be many reasons the developers haven't spent time on it other than the quality of the design. For example, a simple lack of people.

You could explain, for example, how the DMA engine in the card is broken or that it drops interrupts (if either of those is the case). Just saying it's crap isn't very credible without technical background.

My impression was that nVidia provided a proprietary driver, thus not long-term supportable once they lose interest.

I have a number of Supermicro boards. Actually their driver and firmware support is not great, and I have complained about their boards to them, only to get the answer that they work correctly on Windows. I buy them because they have remote management, but have given up on their remote management implementations and will go with an external solution next time. My latest Supermicro board is a C7X99-OCE-F and as you can see here, they don't claim BSD support at all. On Linux they have some IOMMU issues at the moment.

Re: Why would anyone want this?

[Bruce Perens]

As I replied to him, BSD claims support for half a dozen RealTek models, so I can't say he's even accurate about RealTek vs. Intel Ethernet. Now, you at least gave a reason that they might be crap. They're closed. Except that some of them weren't closed enough for a driver to appear on BSD. Did someone get documents, or did they just copy the Linux driver?

If you want uptime, don't have a graphics card in the box. Memory mapping hardware devices into user space is always going to make your box unstable. Both BSD and Linux are really good at staying up without a graphics card in the box.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Ol Olsoc]

Ubuntu isn't perfect, but why would anyone want to bring this experience to Linux?

Want to know why? Because some Linux users are so frothing at the mouth about systemd, that they go right to their happy place when BSD is mentioned.

I've also looked at BSD, and all your issues are spot-on. To put up with the crap you have to put up with in BSD is not worth whatever advantage there is to losing systemd.

side note - I was having an issue compiling a critical program in Linux Mint 17.3, so I tried out Ubuntu Mate. Worked nicely, and quite configurable, with a nice GUI. I'm not so certain that the original build problem wasn't my fault, but I was happy enough with UMate that I kept it.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Ol Olsoc]

That's funny. I'm an OpenBSD user and I'm saying this seriously -- you've just summarized my experience with Linux. I tried using a Linux distro and after lots of pain came back to OpenBSD which has been so much easier to use (once you get past the bare bones installation. I'll admit).

Imposing BSD upon Linux? This isn't trying to be a smartass (I'm an ass, but not smart) I don't have so much experience with BSD, but I've noticed that Windows users trying to use Linux often have issues when they try to use the knowledge they've acquired in Windowsworld and try to force it on Linux.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Ol Olsoc]

I agree that is complete bullshit, but your experience mirrors every Linux experience I've had in the last decade. I try and try to get basic things to work, and they just never do. Actually, Linux worked *better* for me 10 years ago than it has in the last few, so I just stick to BSD. I don't dislike Linux by any means, it just doesn't work for me.

What on earth happened? In a build problem program I was having recently in Mint, I installed and compiled a program I needed badly on several computers, after Installing Linux Mint 17.3, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Mate.

The machines were a dual core Dell Optiplex, a eePC netbook, a Toshiba Satellite, and one of those damned Vista basic computers. Install was from a USB thumbdrive for the Dell, and DVDs for the others.

All of them worked perfectly in that Rogues gallery of computers and distros. Were you trying to install without internet access? That can be a big issue with drivers.

I've been trying to figure this one out for quite a while now.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Ol Olsoc]

They don't support crap hardware.

:-)

It would help me believe this if you could point out "crap" hardware, explain why it's crap, and show that BSD developers decided not to support it because it was crap, with reference to mailing list messages.

Good hardware = Whatever works with BSD

Crap hardware = Whatever doesn't work with BSD

As long as it doesn't have systemd, some users will love it, warts and all.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Bruce Perens]

You mean 3c509. I remember a driver developer who would pay you $1 to throw your 3com card away and send him the BNC T-connector. This was in the thin-net days. He contended that this was the only part worth anything.

Re: Why would anyone want this?

[KGIII]

That's the *least* strange thing I yell out. Often it involves a cowboy hat, a lawn gnome, and a five gallon tub of mustard. What I say is the least of anyone's concerns. And no, she sticks around because I pay well.

You trundle up to any Juarez bar with a hijacked truck full of Ho-Hos, leave the keys in the ignition and back door unlocked, go to the bar, order a margarita - no salt - with cherries and not a lime, and then ask for Julia. She'll be out for you when she's ready.

You'll thank me someday. Arrrrrrriba!

(I'm going to hell, aren't I?)

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[fisted]

- Intel Chips that are not Xeon's
- AMD chips that are not Opteron's

Tough shit, where can I find Xeon and Opteron, and why do they have all the good hardware?

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[almitydave]

I remember a neighbor who bought a Packard Bell just because it had this little program that looked like a room with icons on a shelf for the software they included.

Wait wait wait... You knew someone who actually bought a computer specifically because it had Microsoft Bob????????

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[mrchaotica]

If the vendor doesn't think [BSD] is worth their time to develop drivers for it then [BSD] must not be good enough to develop drivers for.

You sure that's the point you meant to make?

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[invictusvoyd]

That was a first !

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[gustygolf]

I never got the point of Debian/kFreeBSD (which UbuntuBSD seems to be about). Surely you want more than just the kernel of FreeBSD? They have nice userlands. They have a decent libc. They have good manual pages.

Getting away from coreutils and glibc is why I'd choose to run BSD. I don't care one bit about whether the kernel can provide me with ZFS or not.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Bengie]

They suspected that the person submitting the patch had already seen the Linux code, which means he has been contaminated. You can't use his code. Welcome to copyright and the GPL.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Bengie]

If you use the same type of hardware the devs use, you'll have a mostly good time. If you use some obscure integrated hardware that you got with your $40 motherboard or some crazy exotic hardware with your $200 motherboard, it probably won't be supported. Most of FreeBSD devs are running Intel servers and similarly speced desktops.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Bengie]

That issue only applied if you installed the RC, not release. Interestingly enough, it was caused by a race condition during the build process and not the code.

Re: Why would anyone want this?

[Zontar The Mindless]

If you want uptime, you do not run Linux.

Guess that depends on what expectations you have for uptime. 200+ days for a desktop suits me pretty well.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[Tower]

The 3c509 was a great ISA 10Mb NIC and had the BNC and AUI connectors. By 2004, I think the 905 probably would have been it - that one was PCI and 10/100. I had plenty of each over time.

Re:Why would anyone want this?

[laffer1]

It wasn't Microsoft BOB. It was Packard Bell Navigator. it's a totally different thing and unlike Microsoft BOB, Packard Bell released a patch for Windows 95.

My first PC was a Packard Bell Pentium 100mhz and it had that software on it. The novelty wears off pretty quick, but it made for cool demos at the store back then.

2016, the year of...

[Anonymous Coward]

...BSD on the desktop.

What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[0100010001010011]

It has everything 'pretty' that Ubuntu could have, minus the weirdness of a kFreeBSD/GNU userland. It sets everything up from install. You can even select what window manager you want to use during install.

Personally bare FreeBSD itself is just fine if the command line doesn't scare you. It takes less time to install FreeBSD and the 5-10 packages needed to get to a 'normal' desktop than it does to install any version Windows. I'm just kicking myself for not making the switch earlier.

Additionally. Describing projects as "For Humans" must stop. FreeBSD is already for humans. I could teach a middle schooler to install it and get to Facebook. It's honestly not that hard.

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

For me it's the lack of Plex and CrashPlan support. I would LOVE to go straight BSD as I'm very comfortable in Solaris with my career, I realize both have Plex and CrashPlan have supported BSD but their support has been an afterthought. I believe CrashPlan recently officially (last year?) stopped supporting FreeBSD but left their headless config docs up as an unsupported config. I just want ZFS, a slick GUI (not a tablet one -- since its not headless and I use it with Synergy every day), Plex, Samba, and CrashPlan on my home file server! It used to be windows(7) and its amazing how much issues I stopped having by switching to Mint Cinnamon. My early blunders was when I was running my own personal (not public) Usenet crawler and I relied on too many PPA packages which caused conflicts.

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[Masked Coward]

Does your laptop's wifi, sound, LCD panel (in native resolution), and sleep mode work after the install, without further faffing?

If not, it's not 'for humans' yet.

Wifi and sound work out-the-box. Suspend required me to add one line in a config file. I also had to do a few things to make my touchpad work the way I specifically wanted it to.... but I think that's probably true with any system.

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[Xtifr]

The "weirdness" of the *nix userland that most people in the *nix world have standardized on these days. Yeah, can't think why they'd possibly want that.

Regular FreeBSD is indeed just fine, but it has dozens of minor incompatibilities with both GNU and SysV that will trip you up if you're used to those others.

GNU/kFreeBSD is a really nice compromise if you're used to either GNU/Linux or SysV. GNU is designed to be as compatible as possible with both BSD and SysV. (So it's also a nice option if you're a BSD guy forced to work on a SysV system. Which is actually how I got started with it.)

If you're a BSD guy using BSD, then yeah, there's little point in putting GNU on it. But for everyone else, it makes a lot of sense.

Frankly, I try to stick GNU on everything. I've run it on BSD, HPUX, Solaris, SunOS, Windows, and, of course, Linux.

Right now, I'm running GNU/kFreeBSD in a vm to port some software to BSD. When I get it running, on that, I'll install regular BSD to make sure everything still works, but I'm interested in the porting effort, not in mucking around learning all of BSD's quirks, so GNU/kFreeBSD is a godsend. I'm not scared of the command line. I just don't want to waste my time remembering all the little incompatibilities of the BSD userland while I'm trying to get some work done. In recent years, every single time I've tried to use straight BSD, I end up getting frustrated at some little thing that just won't work the way I want it to. The way I'm used to.

Now, for someone who's new to *nix, I agree that BSD is a very fine option. Heck, I started with the BSD-based version of SunOS, and still have fond memories of it. But at this point in time, I am so used to the GNU userland that I just don't want to deal with something that doesn't have it. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who prefers GNU—after all, not only has the Debian GNU/BSD survived for many years, but now there's a second one! :)

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[drinkypoo]

It has everything 'pretty' that Ubuntu could have, minus the weirdness of a kFreeBSD/GNU userland. It sets everything up from install. You can even select what window manager you want to use during install.

It's completely insensible since the good part of Linux is the kernel, not the userland. It's not that Linux's userland is bad, but BSD's is fine. But when you give up the Linux kernel, you give up compatibility. You give up drivers for high performance graphics hardware, you give up being able to use vmware... If you're not going to do that stuff (because you have crap integrated graphics for example) then you don't seem to be giving up anything.

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[0100010001010011]

Dell M6800.

wifi

Yes. It's even detected during FreeBSD's install and I can finish the installation on Wifi.

sound

Yes. And it's hands down better than the spaghetti mess that is sound on Linux.

LCD Panel

Yes. Nvidia even takes some of the money I give them and pays someone to develop drivers for the graphics card.

sleep mode work after the install,

I don't know, but I never used sleep on Windows or Linux so it's not a use case that I've tested.

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[0100010001010011]

I just tested it. Sleep works fine as well. The documentation on it is straight forward and easy to read: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/ha...

Tested it and it works fine.

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[Deagol]

Plex is there. My home PC runs FreeBSD, and it serves Plex to my Rokus.

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[thegarbz]

I could teach a middle schooler to install it and get to Facebook.

Pffft. That doesn't impress me. You can teach a middle schooler to hack in the NSA, unless of course they are teaching you to do it.

You want to impress me then teach my mother.

Re:What's wrong with PC-BSD?

[0100010001010011]

Why not FreeNAS if it's a home server? CrashPlan and Plex have plugins.

Thanks summary

[orledrat]

Thanks for answering the question "What's UbuntuBSD?" seeing as this is Slashdot it would have been more useful to explain "What's a human being?". You insensitive clod.

Re:Thanks summary

[Required Snark]

Wish I had points to mod you up.

Slashdot, where being human puts you in the minority.

Re:Thanks summary

[Kjella]

Thanks for answering the question "What's UbuntuBSD?" seeing as this is Slashdot it would have been more useful to explain "What's a human being?". You insensitive clod.

It would, but all we got is an undocumented blob written in quad-bits (ACGT) and the original developer can't be reached. Not that it'd do much good, the code is constantly morphing through forking off new child processes while old ones come to a halt so there's probably little of the original left. There was an instruction manual too, but it's equally cryptic like "Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground". Source control seems completely absent so there's billions of versions in production. While we're making some progress on reverse engineering to fix the most critical bugs it's mostly a black box project full of unexplained and absurd behaviors. Like making dry jokes on a nerd website.

Re:Thanks summary

[thegarbz]

It's Poettering's answer to people moving to BSD to escape systemd.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

"[...] bring the power of the FreeBSD kernel to Ubuntu Linux."

WTF?

Inspired?

[deniable]

"ubuntuBSD is inspired by the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD project"

Is that in the same way as Ubuntu is inspired by the Debian project?

Re:Inspired?

[Anonymous Coward]

Inspired: To take an existing project and market it as your own.

As opposed to?

[rebelwarlock]

What's the target demographic for other distros, rabbits?

Re:As opposed to?

[cfalcon]

OS X is for dolphins, Windows is for monkeys, standard BSDs are for superior alien beings, and Linux is for robot overlords with laser eyes.

Re: As opposed to?

[david4164]

So long and thanks for all the FreeBSD.

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard this talked about before, on bsdnow.tv - about people wanting the stability and reliability of the FreeBSD kernel, but with a GNU userland. We use Ubuntu Server at my work extensively, and I use FreeBSD at home, and to be honest, I really don't think it's hard to pick up one if you know the other. Moreover, Linux does have a kernel module now for ZFS, so what's the point? You're almost certainly better off using stock Ubuntu, if you're a Linux guy - it's got actual dollars going into maintaining it. If you're into FreeBSD, you're also better off going with stock FreeBSD.

I don't even know why people use PC-BSD, to be honest, and I've tried it several times. FreeBSD with an XFCE desktop is easy and as quick as sin to set up, and I'm not just a FreeBSD fanboy. People should just go ahead and check it out. Even GhostBSD and DesktopBSD don't get that much traction these days - it's because FreeBSD is pretty straightforward, if you're willing to put an evening or two into finding your way around.

Re:What's the point?

[dbIII]

Moreover, Linux does have a kernel module now for ZFS, so what's the point?

Because ZFS on linux is not yet ready for serious use. It is catching up and is fine for the home PC I'm using now but it still lags a long way behind other systems with ZFS on a lot of points, especially performance.

Re:What's the point?

[Wolfrider]

> Because ZFS on linux is not yet ready for serious use

--That is not my experience. Killer-app for Linux is ZFS+Samba, and I have had that going with decent performance (for home / small business use, at least) for the last 2-3 years.

--This is with an older quad-core 2.4GHz COTS PC box with 6GB DDR2 RAM running Xubuntu 14.04--64--LTS and standard SATA-2 hard drives connected to (2) inexpensive 4-port PCIe cards. With standard 1500-byte Ethernet frames, I can almost saturate the link (~100-120MB/sec) running an FTP transfer from a RAIDz10 with noatime (2x2 disk pool.)

--The limiting issue is usually the write speed on the receiving side, unless it's going to SSD. (Writes to the pool are admittedly a bit slower IIRC, but zfs *is* doing auto-checking for every write.) But in general, **you don't run ZFS for max speed**, you run it for Reliability -- and features like "copies=2" + snapshots + filesystem-level compression. As well as the occasional quick RAID rebuild.

http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Featu...

--What some folks might want to do to speed things up is some research; I have some custom stuff going on in /etc/rc.local (sysctls to speedup I/O, blockdev --setra 8192 /dev/sd* , Gig ethernet speedup script, rmmod unused modules, stop all unneeded services, etc. Optimizations are available upon request.) Bog-standard Linux install is not optimized for speed, usually. Plus if you're running all your pool drives off motherboard SATA ports, it can limit your speed. On my rig, the "mirror" drives in the pool are connected to the 2nd SATA card.

--Also - if you want best speed from ZFS, most advice is to run mirrored pools - *not* RAIDZ. I switched out my original 500GBx6 RAIDZ2 to equivalent RAIDz10 (with 2x2 newer 2TB WD Red drives, which aren't even considered hi-speed drives) and the pool performance improved. If I expand the pool to 6 drives, it should pick up even a little more speed. If I wanted to spend more money, I could put a SAS card in and run that instead of SATA.

--An interesting feature of ZFS, BTW - I started out with 2x2TB drives, unmirrored, making a non-RAID writable space of ~4TB. After saving up for a couple of months and buying 2 more drives, I was able to add mirrors to both disks in the pool ON-THE-FLY and converted the pool in-situ to RAIDz10. I did a "burn-in" test (R/W all sectors) on the new drives 1st, and I consider WD to be pretty reliable to begin with, but still - I don't know any other filesystem that you could do that with.

Z File System?

[xbytor]

It's just ZFS. It used to stand for "Zettabyte File System" but that was dropped years ago.

Re:Z File System?

[omnichad]

But why not go for the recursive bacronym and call it ZFS File System? So that you're using the correct name in the process, too?

Re:Z File System?

[deniable]

Feel free to google for NFS some time. :(

Yea, but systemd...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't read ANYWHERE about this new module for systemd called "UbuntuBSD", this must be early April fools, ha! you got me...

Seriously though, can we expect a good desktop environment like MATE to run on UbuntuBSD without the cancer that is systemd?

Re:Yea, but systemd...

[KGIII]

Err... I'm going to assume you're not retarded and just don't know. If you want MATE and BSD, get GhostBSD.

http://www.ghostbsd.org/downlo...

Why would you say such stupid things? Seriously?

Re:Yea, but systemd...

[Eunuchswear]

SystemD trolls don't know their history.

Upstart, you idiot,

You know, an init system that runs everything under ptrace.

Then you're doing something wrong.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Are you sure it was FreeBSD, not Net or Open? If so you were either on some oddball hardware where support was just coming into existence, or you were doing something wrong.

BSD forked three ways and the three branches are specialized for three purposes:
  - FreeBSD is about running on as many kinds of hardware and peripherals as possible. If it runs under BSD it runs under FreeBSD. Once the driving code is solid it might get imported into other branches, or ported to other things (like Linux). Meanwhile, maybe the code for your device is still new and still flaky.
  - NetBSD is about being a reference platform for developing, and pushing the envelope on, networking technology (at the expense of only bothering to be guaranteed to run on a limited number of platforms and configurations).
  - OpenBSD is about being reliable and secure - at the expense of being limited to devices and code that are open enough to be audited, and being developed and maintained outside the US and its "encryption is a weapon" export controls.

(Or at least that's how I understand it. I'm not following it closely right now because I'm not running it - though I'm considering switching from Linux to Open and may soon be giving it more attention.)

Re:Then you're doing something wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even close. NetBSD's focus has always been on portability and running on as many platforms as possible. FreeBSD is a general purpose operating system. DragonflyBSD is a fork of FreeBSD, originally for the purpose of improving performance for symmetric multiprocessing and threading. OpenBSD is focused on security and reliability.

Re:Then you're doing something wrong.

[drinkypoo]

NetBSD is about being a reference platform for developing, and pushing the envelope on, networking technology (at the expense of only bothering to be guaranteed to run on a limited number of platforms and configurations).

Before Linux, Netbsd was THE distribution for running on weird platforms. Since Linux, Netbsd has no particular reason to exist. Linux runs on dramatically more hardware than netbsd now. Several ports have withered and died since Linux took on all the weird architectures.

Re:Then you're doing something wrong.

[Bengie]

PC-BSD is just a thin layer on top of FreeBSD. You can upgrade and downgrade FreeBSD to/from PC-BSD.

Re:Then you're doing something wrong.

[laffer1]

4 ways? MirBSD and MidnightBSD made 6 and there have been several other forks.

Looks like someone had the same idea as me

[Kryptonut]

https://slashdot.org/comments....

I suggested a similar thing when the GPL purists were getting ansy about Ubuntu planning to include ZFS support.

name wont last

[Anonymous Coward]

canonical is anal about their trademarks.

Is it at least systemd free?

[bobeil]

I would consider it if it does not have systemd.

BSD/Linux All subject to hardware

[tomxor]

The problem with any open source OS is that your experience with it can be highly subjective depending on the hardware. Many including myself have had the opposite experience to you and also mixed - all depending on hardware... The important thing is to not be an absolutist jerk based on purely your own anecdotal evidence like yourself and realise that the world is not that black and white.

I use both various Linux distros and FreeBSD, they all have their advantages and disadvantages, and they all work with mixed results on different hardware, one thing many people like about FreeBSD is the concept of a base system that's not excessively minimal, not bloated and builds easily... but for FreeBSD like any system that's not in the popular desktop spotlight - will have poor device support on systems like laptops, this only gets better with popularity, which is why Linux is usually a far easier experience once the basic system can run... For anyone who intends to use FreeBSD on a laptop and has bothered to visit the forums and device support page, they will know to choose hardware very carefully... or if sticking with existing and unideal hardware to be prepared to get stuck into messing around with drivers, just like Linux pre2000. My most recent experience with FreeBSD is on a 8 year old macbook pro, this machine has pretty terrible hardware and various linux distros i've tried on it are very unstable - oddly FreeBSD seems quite happy on it, but like I said device support sucks, so I have to mess with kernel modules and recompile to get little details like backlight control to work, luckily this process is actually quite a pleasant experience on FreeBSD... where as this would probably already be done for you on ubuntu.

ZFS on Ubuntu works fine

[akindo]

I ran Debian/kFreeBSD for a couple of years as it was the only/best way I could get ZFS support. But there were several packages I needed which weren't available, others outdated, and Ubuntu got native ZFS support (https://launchpad.net/~zfs-native/+archive/ubuntu/stable), so I switched to Ubuntu, and have been happier with that. However, standby mode on my Intel Atom MB hasn't worked with either distro. :(

Re:Well that didn't take long,

[0100010001010011]

PC-BSD

Supermicro?

[Bruce Perens]

My Supermicro C7x99-oce-f doesn't support ECC, does support non-Xeon CPUs, the sound interface is from RealTek, and the Aspeed IPMI integrates a low-end display chip and its firmware doesn't handle having another display card in the system well.

It's sort of everything people in this thread say Supermicro isn't.

Re:Supermicro?

[MachineShedFred]

Every manufacturer makes their Ford Pinto eventually.

Look! A car analogy!

Who was the previous BSD designed for?

[kuzb]

If it wasn't for humans, was I using the version for robots all this?

Re:Well that didn't take long,

[Zontar The Mindless]

Here.

Installing the Beta ISO in Vmware now

[Wolfrider]

--Setting up root on ZFS isn't exactly intuitive, not sure if I could duplicate what I ended up doing...

REF: http://www.tumfatig.net/201205...

--Basically I gave (sda is 15GB) sda1 300MB UFS /boot, sda2 700MB swap, and sda3 ZFS. When I hit "Configure ZFS", I named the default pool "zroot" and configured the Logical volume to have 100MB less than the default displayed size (IIRC.)

--When Selecting and Installing Software, I was able to use my local Squid proxy but the step kept bombing out. I ended up selecting the 1st option + OpenSSH + Minimal Xubuntu install to get it to work. (Had to skip Samba + Print server + Xubuntu desktop.)

--And now installing Grub has failed at "update-grub".

--Don't think this is ready for general release yet. And the distro REALLY needs a Forum where people can login and post.

--Unfortunately, having given kfreebsd a real shot for about 2 years a while back (installing it in a VM and contributing bug reports), I'm not really surprised by my results so far. I continue to hope for the best though, maybe eventually kfreebsd will get to be as stable as everything else but it needs a really dedicated development team (and maybe a paying sponsor.)

Re:Installing the Beta ISO in Vmware now

[Wolfrider]

--UPDATE: I rebooted the VM and ran the install again, deleted the ZFS config and redid it, proxy went OK (so I didn't waste a lot of bandwidth re-downloading packages) and did the same software selection (1st option, +SSH, +Minimal Xubuntu install) and this time Grub installed OK and I booted into the UbuntuBSD display manager.

Re:Installing the Beta ISO in Vmware now

[Wolfrider]

--1st impressions: Buggy desktop - hangs when I do Edit \ Prefences in the xfce4 Terminal or the XFCE Panel window, **no text virtual consoles** on screens 1-4... Only 1 virtual desktop by default?? Strange choice for X-windows...

+ installed pkgs joe mc screen netcat == OK

PROTIP: + Installing " lxde " display manager and running " lxrandr " to set the screen resolution seems to get around most of the bugginess so far. Also using LXTERMINAL instead of xfce's terminal.

+ Apt-get update/upgrade works with my proxy settings remembered from the install, which is nice. I was able to install Firefox web browser, but ' apt-file update ' doesn't do anything useful.

--If anyone wants a working Vmware VM of UbuntuBSD, feel free to email me.

Re:Installing the Beta ISO in Vmware now

[Wolfrider]

--UPDATE: The VM shit itself and wouldn't reboot after converting the disk from Flat to Growable. Reinstalled, this time with a UFS instead of ZFS root, and the 'zpool' command ISN'T EVEN AVAILABLE.

--Judgement: This is Alpha-level software, not suitable for general distribution yet. No real homepage for the distro except for Sourceforge and no support forum. AVOID unless you like frustration.