Submitted by “I’ve been using PC-BSD for approx. 10 Months so I’ve had enough time to see what life throws at me with it. My first install was 1.0 Release Canadate 1 and I currently run PC-BSD 1.2 (the current release) on my laptop and have a beta version of 1.3 installed on my desktop for testing. This will cover PC-BSD 1.2 and PC-BSD in general. PC-BSD is primarly for desktops but makes a darn good laptop/workstation system.” More here.
A User’s Review of PC-BSD
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The only downside as I see it, is the lack of 3945abg support, although wpi on OpenBSD currently supports it, it a shame that it hasn’t been ported and in the FreeBSD source tree that is the only thing thats holding me back from moving back to FreeBSD/PC-BSD.
I’ve come to detest wireless cards by Intel. FreeBSD’s support for them isn’t as good as Linux or Windows (which isn’t really the developers’ but Intel’s fault), and I would often experience huge amounts of dropped packets and stalled connections. So I switched to a card based on Atheros and couldn’t be happier. Things have been running extremely smoothly since.
Also, I sometimes dual-boot into Windows, and I was surprised to see that the Atheros card seems to run much better than its Intel counterpart there, too, which leads me to believe that Intel products come with serious shortcomings no matter what the platform.
So, do yourself a favor and switch to Atheros. Cards with an Atheros chip can be had on Ebay for little money.
There’s a wpi(4) driver being tested in -CURRENT right now, with plans to have it in 6.3-RELEASE.
I gave up reading that after the first few paragraphs. I’m sure it has a lot of detailed information about the PC-BSD user experience and whatnot, but the article is full of grammatical errors, sentence fragments, and is poorly organized. Some paragraphs appear twice. Just…wow.
‘Me fail english? Unpossible!’
Wow is right!!
This could have been a very nice article if the author had edited it.
Anyway, PC-BSD is an excellent distro.
The author mentiones some things co be a “Con” regarding PC-BSD. I think he’s not getting the point in some cases, so I’d like to comment on a few of them (reordered):
It sucks for DirectX (Win) Gaming.
Limited support for Windows software (via WINE) -> very crappy imho for any thing major
Don’t even think about DirectX…
I think PC-BSD is not designed for DirectX gaming, so it’s not a Con. On the other hand, you could construct cases like “it sucks for brewing coffee” or “it sucks for building houses”. In most cases, dysfunctional DirectX games will be an issue of wine or winex. So why would someone want to use a “Windows” program when he can use an equivalent PC-BSD program? I don’t try to run a z/OS program on my SGI Octane.
Professional phone support costs money.
Does he mean this for real? Every professional action, may be phone support or hardware diagnostic service, costs money.
PBI installed programs cannot interface with traditional FreeBSD ports/packages most times
That’s right, but one can use the traditional FreeBSD ports collection and precompiles packages side by side with the PBI packages, allthough the use of PBI is recommended.
Most “Special needs”, Shareware, and Malware softwares do not support GNU/Linux, *BSD, or Mac OS X.
The author says it: It’s not a “Con” with PC-BSD, it’s one with the so-called “special needs”.
Uninstalling Windows or Mac OS will probably void your vendors warrenty.
Really?
Included boot loader is poor for multi-hard drive setups (use GAG or GRUB)
I cannot confirm that.
Does not support VisualBasic or nativly Microsoft/Apple extensions to languages
You can use similar BASIC stuff with OpenOffice, if you really like to. I see this statement as a “Pro”. Take a look into /usr/ports/lang/.
Does not support _very_ old CPU archutechures(< i686). Such as AMD K6, Intel 80486, 80386, or 80286s.
May I quote a sentence I often read here at OSAlert? “Who cares about this old crap?!” The designers of PC-BSD surely didn’t. Personally, I have to admit that I use older x86 hardware for some purposes, but I surely won’t be that stupid to try to install PC-BSD on them.
Needs at least 384~512MB of DDR Memory or 256+ MB of DDR2 memory to run fast enough for me.
Thanks, KDE.
The FreeBSD handbook only covers traditional FreeBSD methods.
Therefore, it’s called the FreeBSD handbook. Further documentation is provided by the PC-BSD developers, so it would be wise to refer to them.
But I agree with this one:
Getting a working flashplayer can be sticky (for now) this is a pro imho hehee.
It’s really a bit complicated, but it may work in some cases and with some versions of “Flash”.
But finally it’s a good review that I can recommend reading. It has some interesting aspects for (verage) users. One thing I don’t like about the article is the misuse of language. Even though I’m not a native english speaker, it appears to be very bad english to me. There are HTML tags spread around the article, sentences are not completed etc. It’s hard to read sometimes.
>>Needs at least 384~512MB of DDR Memory or 256+ MB of DDR2 memory to run fast enough for me.
> Thanks, KDE.
Thanks, Firefox and OpenOffice?
see http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/memory/
Well, maybe. But it could also be because PC-BSD uses statically linked libraries, which essentially means that for every app you start the entire (say Qt) library has to be loaded into memory, afaik.
“Well, maybe. But it could also be because PC-BSD uses statically linked libraries, which essentially means that for every app you start the entire (say Qt) library has to be loaded into memory, afaik.”
No, that’s not correct, as far as I know. Let me explain what the “static library” thing means to PC-BSD.
The PBI packages come with all the dependencies needed. Let’s take an example: You want to install the Psi client, it depends on the Qt libs. So the PBI package includes the Psi program (precompiled of course) and the Qt libs. (Let’s assume Qt is the only dependency, allthough it’s not true.) If you install the PBI, you have Psi and Qt on your HD.
Now you install the Licq PBI. It saves the Licq program and the Qt libs on your HD.
Now, you have Qt libs installed twice.
BUT: If you run Psi and Licq, the Qt libs are loaded only once into memory.
If you would install Psi and Licq via ports or packages, the Qt libs would be present on your HD only once. The rule is simple: If dependency is available, use it; if it’s not, install it first, then use it.
Maybe I’m wrong here, but I think that’s the way it works.
But finally it’s a good review that I can recommend reading. It has some interesting aspects for (verage) users. One thing I don’t like about the article is the misuse of language. Even though I’m not a native english speaker, it appears to be very bad english to me. There are HTML tags spread around the article, sentences are not completed etc. It’s hard to read sometimes.
What you can expect from 17 year old hacker
I think this article is more accurate than all previous ones. Most of articles are written by people with one week or less experience of using PC-BSD.
PC-BSD have major reorganizations on server side (migrating to new hosting), development stuff (code clean-up, new installer) so we expect some delay on 1.3 release this year.
I was once shocked by PC-BSD how stable it is and how fast and how easy to install applications and I thought I is the answer to Windows/Mac refugees; But I was also shocked how the stability changed from version to another one to unbelievable level of refusing to install on the same hardware It ran flawlessly before; And I am speaking about release versions rather than betas or RCs.
I used to see such problems with linux 3 years ago but not anymore without exception to any of around 10 distros I have tested and used productively. I mean FC4 will install the same for FC5 the same for FC6 and so on even RHEL4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 and 4.4 on the same hardware; whereas v 1.0 of PC-BSD will install 1.1 won’t 1.2 will and the cycle goes. This kind of unpredictability translate to fear from trusting such a distro untill they succeed to show stability for successive 3 versions.
This, of course hurt me because I loved PC-BSD and I loved the packaging system they have and their installer that did what all linuxes dream to do without success.
Currently I work on upgrading all distros on my netwrok to ubuntu 6.10 from FC5, because I feel that ubuntu beats FC6 in package installations and management; maybe I will be back to Redhat when they release their RHEL5.
Also keep in mind that PC-BSD is not like windows ease of use and its backward compatibility; ie you have a software working on a kernel version, then you update that kernel version of hal then your app will not work; and all you are left for is to go and figure it out from the forums, and we all know how forums are “1:9 rule” 10% are real troubleshooter while the 90 % are just help file suggesters.
Even though I wish them the best in the future with their move toward free world.
Thank you, Charles A Landemaine for submitting the article and thank you, Eugenia, for being brave enough to publish the link to such refreshing read. ( I can’t care less about grammar and article composition )
It would be my #1 candidate for hypothetical “Beginner’s guide to the desktop Unix” unformal and friendly “OS and what to do with it” manual.
I know most experts and high-profile operating system reviewers would find many holes in sas_spidey01’s observations but they should know it is not fully competent insight but rather “I’ll tell ya,buddy” sort of friendly advice.
What’s more important to me is that such a complex topic as operating system review migh be is finding its way to “ordinary” non-geeky people aroung the block who are not always chatting about last CSI: episode.
sas_spidey01’s certainly isn’t average computer user ( http://sas-spidey01.livejournal.com/7246.html )
but his honesty and naiveness makes me believing
there still are computer users who enjoy computing whatever it might be.
Should we ever see a paperback “Anthology of PC geeks notes” sas_spidey01’s digital diary would be
among them no doubt about it.
fortunately the review has unlike a lot of other reviews more text and less pictures.
I submitted this review because not only c|net and NewsForge articles are interesting. It’s also nice to read opinions of users like you and me.
Good call. I found it interesting.
This guy seem to have a very “user” perspective on things, and that is important because we can learn what improvements we need to make to software -> friendly without dumbing it down. He clearly “mastered” pc-bsd (and kde) to some extent without being a rocket scientist and that is a good sign.
He got the message through to me anyways
PC-BSD is slick. Thats the best way I can describe it. It seems more consistent. The PBI system is great. Its not really aimed at the power user / developer space.
This guy really needs some technical writing help. I appreciate the article. Good ideas, but the editing leaves some be desired.