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

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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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

[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:Hosted On SourceForce?

[cfalcon]

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

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.

Z File System?

[xbytor]

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

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: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.