Submitted by “DesktopBSD 1.6 RC 3 is now available for download from our mirrors or via BitTorrent. This release candidate is considered a large step towards a final release 1.6 with major changes such as: X.Org release 7.2, improving support for modern graphics hardware; NVIDIA graphics driver, providing hardware 3D acceleration for NVIDIA video cards; latest FreeBSD 6-STABLE as base system with High Definition Audio support; support for multiple processors and multi-core CPUs; more up-to-date software packages from the DesktopBSD build servers; many small bug fixes and optimizations. Upgrades from 1.0 and previous release candidates are supported. An additional language CD and 64-bit (AMD64) DVD will be released soon.”
Are trolls sleeping? No one to say BSD is dead? Linux is better?
Just woke up
BSD is alive! (sorry)
Can’t wait to try this. I really believe DesktopBSD
is shaping up to be the most solid
desktop system.
What I’m waiting for in addition to a fast, robust
system is:
(1) full flash-9 support
(2) nice looking asian-language fonts like fedora has
(3) Realplayer (or a helixplayer replacement)
It would also be nice to have some kind of virtulization for BSD as a host. Maybe freebsd-7 will
have that.
When this happens it’s goodbye linux.
FreeBSD has jails, and of course Qemu in the ports. (don't know if DesktopBSD has a package but it probably will)
Neither is really like KVM or Xen in Linux
FreeBSD can run linux binairies.
There’s a commercial virtualisazion package called win4bsd though.
I’m sorry so it will never happen. Of course there is work going on in terms of a native Realplayer. But Adobe/Macromedia has no interest in porting Flash to non-hype platforms. Asian-language fonts should be no problem. And virtulization, well, in terms of Vmware ask Vmware. Xen is an on-going project by the way and KVM a SoC project.
Well thanks for your comment Olive. I Think
there is a flash-9 player in ports if
I recall and i got it to work in PC-BSD for
about 3 seconds before it crashed
I have heard someone has got flash-9 to work
in linux emulated firefox via greasemonkey extension
and hackery.
So it sounds like Someone is working on it..!
The korean langauge display was a nice touch..It’s good
but could be better(www,yahoo.co.kr is a testbed and y the fonts spaghetti across the page)
Another problem is the playing of audio CDs..
Only Amarock could do it and only after I changed the default output engine to oss. Maybe some recompiling
of KDE binaries with freebsd ad not linux alsa is needed?
Overall it seems so far so good though!
“Another problem is the playing of audio CDs..”
For initial checks, you can first ensure
% mixer cd vol 100
and then use
% cdcontrol play
or
% cdcontrol -f /dev/acd0 play 1
if neccessary. Refer to “man cdcontrol” and “man mixer”. The program cdcontrol belongs to the base OS and is, along with mixer, a good starting point for diagnostics.
You can use xmms’s audio CD player functionality or stick to “old fashioned” tools like xcd.
“Only Amarock could do it and only after I changed the default output engine to oss. Maybe some recompiling of KDE binaries with freebsd ad not linux alsa is needed?”
Uh, this sounds very complicated and should not be neccessary. Honestly, who wants to recompile KDE? If neccessary, use pkg_add -r with the proper package names. The situation you’re describing seems to illustrate a problem with KDE and sound. Check basics first.
It’s an audio cable not present, most of the time. If you don’t have an audio cable between your CD drive and the main board, Linux/BSD won’t play your audio CD because it relies on analogic technology instead of digital technology like Windows. Time of cavemen.
You know you are right I think.I did try
the command line suggested above and
got NO SOUND and no errors either It’s amazing
that KDE and maybe Gnome too have not cleaned
up their legacy applications to allow digital
option. I remember having this problem
5 years ago for &&** sake.
Fortunately SOME music jukeboxes will work
Amarok has no problem in Linux or FreeBSD.
As it has meen explained before, the use of the internal (analog) audio connector is neccessary to use the method of analog mixing. Some mainboards or audio cards provide more than one connector (the “cheap” stuff I’m using provides three internal, actually using one for the DVD drive, one for the CD recorder and one for the PD/CD drive, along with one external).
Surely you don’t have this special cable installed. Your diagnostics show it:
“I did try the command line suggested above and got NO SOUND and no errors either”
Interpret this in the correct manner: If no error message is displayed, the CD drive plays audio correctly. You just don’t hear it. If your CD drive has a headphone connector on its front, you can check it easily: You will hear the CD playing. Maybe a LED is blinking, too. Of course you can create a strange (but working) bypass by plugging a 3.5mm stereo cable from the front connector of the CD drive into the line in connector of your audio card.
“It’s amazing that KDE and maybe Gnome too have not cleaned up their legacy applications to allow digital option. “
I don’t think analog audio is “legacy”, but I see the problem. Maybe the inability to play audio from digital data (“over the ATA cable”) is a problem at kernel level? Maybe someone can rectify… but…
“Fortunately SOME music jukeboxes will work Amarok has no problem in Linux or FreeBSD.”
… maybe the functionality described above is at application level? Unfortunately, I cannot find any hint within the according manuals.
“Of course you can create a strange (but working) bypass by plugging a 3.5mm stereo cable from the front connector of the CD drive into the line in connector of your audio card. :-)”
Well like any computer sold in the last 5 years(at least in Korea) there is NO audio card. These are
prosumer things now, and AC’97 or HDA audio on-board
is more than good enough for most people.
Again I think it is the case that these tools
simply haven’t kept pace with computer hardware
development.
“Well like any computer sold in the last 5 years(at least in Korea) there is NO audio card.”
This is correct. I bought my last one many years ago but decided not to use the AC’97 crap. Instead, I installed a PCI card with CMI chipset for better performance. As far as I know, the AC’97 and MC’97 do emulate sound cards or modems respectively, creating extra system load for the CPU which has to perform the sound card or modem functionalities.
Maybe it’s the same situation with digital audio data transfer via ATA cable – more CPU load? I don’t know…
“These are prosumer things now, and AC’97 or HDA audio on-board is more than good enough for most people.”
In most cases this is true. For special needs I’m glad to have the option to use other hardware. For example, MC’97 modems do barely support standards which makes them hardly usabe or unusable with modern OSes (e. g. FreeBSD). I’d still prefer a serial modem if needed, such as I prefer a “stand alone” audio card for better performance and driver support.
% dmesg | grep ^pcm ; cat /dev/sndstat
pcm0: <CMedia CMI8738> port 0xd400-0xd4ff irq 16 at device 7.0 on pci3
FreeBSD Audio Driver (newpcm)
Installed devices:
pcm0: <CMedia CMI8738> at io 0xd400 irq 16 (1p/1r/0v channels duplex default
“Again I think it is the case that these tools simply haven’t kept pace with computer hardware
development.
“
If hardware specific techniques have become standard, software should try to support them. Maybe the ATA audio data transfer has an equivalent at kernel level in order to make it work everywhere? I’ll go and investigate.
But on the other hand, downwards compatibility is important. Especially FreeBSD is a great OS to create usable computers even with 150 MHz 586 CPUs (my personal minimum). While the quotient “speed = hardware / software” stays the same with MICROS~1 OSes on recent hardware, FreeBSD is always impressing by speed improvements on the same (!) hardware. That’s why it is important to have in mind, thatt older hardware is still in use (just because it works), so abandoning support for this “easy” stuff would be bad. Just think about how great SCSI works with BSD, allthough almost no one seems to use it anymore (I still have to).
Although I really like BSD and Solaris I mostly run Linux. I have recently ported Slackware to MIPS and am soon going to do a SPARC port and am having the same problems as the BSDs on x86.
In my opinion the only solution is to complete projects such as Gnash and/or BSD/CDDL licensed equivalents to make these platform and architecture dependent binaries obsolete.
While these proprietary companies once had an advancing role for platform uptake they are now mainly a hindrance to the free development and use of platforms and in that respect they are taking choice away from users.
Have PC-BSD and DesktopBSD thought about merging efforts towards just one killer product?
Anybody know of any reviews comparing the two? Pros/cons of each? I’ve done some searching but haven’t found anything, especially dealing with the two new versions. I would, but I’d like another HD first…
-both of them are FreeBSD. Period.
-it’s no Linux distro competition approach
-both of them are using FreeBSD-stable, KDE, Xorg 7.x
-PC-BSD is using the optional PBI installation
-DesktopBSD is using the tools of FreeBSD
So in the end it’s different. If you’re “in need” of benchmarks, test FreeBSD. Comparing two FreeBSD systems is just nonsense, because FreeBSD is always the *complete* operating system, not just a kernel.
So in the end it’s different. If you’re “in need” of benchmarks, test FreeBSD. Comparing two FreeBSD systems is just nonsense
There *ARE* differences between these two systems, and you know it, so asking for a comparison is not “just nonsense”.
from the FAQ
(http://www.desktopbsd.net/index.php?id=33)
This is what people were asking.
I believe merge isn’t possible without a consent of the company that bought PC-BSD. In other words, this company would have to buy DesktopBSD too and the guys at DesktopBSD need to agree in order for a merger to go ahead. PC-BSD is no longer a stand alone non-commercial project but this is good.
Edited 2007-07-26 09:25
Why should we do it? There is just a different approach of doing things and it’s good if people have the choice.
PC-BSD now has GUI tools like DesktopBSD and also has PBI.
DesktopBSD has a 64-bit version.
I think a merge would make sense.