Submitted by Hot on the heels of the release of FreeBSD 9, it’s the ninth version of its desktop-oriented offspring to jump into the spotlight. “Based upon FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE, this is the first release of PC-BSD which offers users a variety of desktop environments to choose from, such as KDE, GNOME, XFCE, LXDE and more! Also available are pre-built VirtualBox and VMware images with integrated guest tools for rapid virtual system deployment, and native support for installing directly to OS X BootCamp partitions.”
Let’s keep the commenting here to the features of FreeBSD 9.0 and PC-BSD 9.0.
Thanks.
Well, if we’re probing for peace “Stone Soup” style, I’ll say that that I’m willing to back off on my past criticisms of the PBI packaging structure. The details of my criticisms still apply. But the end result makes sense for what they are trying to do. And the ramifications are probably not so bad as I’ve argued previously.
That’s my contribution to the soup. It wasn’t trivial to get myself to say it.
-Steve Bergman
Edited 2012-01-17 03:08 UTC
ignore this
Edited 2012-01-17 08:49 UTC
But OSAlert is _THE_ place to go for license wars.
With that said, a diplomatic truce is certainly a nice change of pace.
shipping with both vmware and virtualbox images, right out of the gate, is awesome. it is actually a revelation to me because this is the first time I’ve seen a distro do that.
Indeed. it’s an awesome way for an OS to get people who perhaps otherwise wouldn’t to jump in and try it. More OSes should consider doing the same.
As for PC-BSD itself, I can’t speak highly enough of the work these guys do. The core FreeBSD stability and features augmented by a tasteful and well thought out desktop configuration out of box is a killer combination. Highly recommended for the BSD curious who may have been turned off by the more old school BSD install/setup processes.
I fully agree. The possibility of trying out the OS without installation, but also without the limitations of using a DVD-based live system is superior to having to install something to a disk (often including a full backup of that disk prior to any installation attempt) just for trying something.
VM images are an excellent to do that. At this occassion, I may also point to VirtualBSD: http://www.virtualbsd.info/ – It hasn’t arrived at the v9 branch yet, but anyway, if you want to go from 8.1 to 9.0 with your OS and applications, it’s just a few (well documented) keystrokes away.
The developers have done a very good job delivering the power of the FreeBSD OS to those who are insisting on using GUI stuff everywhere (no impolite statement here!), and even the installer is very versatile.
Sadly KDE is often considered “not mine” by many power users. But KDE seems to have improved, that’s why it’s worth a new try.
Regarding PBI: Even though the initial concept is fully okay for the target audience, it may be seen as “not so okay” from a technical and procedural point of view. Luckily, the power user will now have “PBI Manager”, a collection of CLI tools to get rid of unpleasant chase across the web using a browser, downloading stuff, and manually handholding the installation process, next, next, yes, next, next, reboot.
The portable install/setup processes.
I will surely try this release because my primary consern is language support: How about german language? How about a combination of english, german and asian language (chinese and japanese characters both on input and output), selectable on a per-user basis? How good will that work? I’m really interested, because “I only English!” has been a significant problem of PC-BSD, precisely of KDE, in the past.
Thanks for adding VirtualBSD to the list! As a matter of fact we’re just putting the final touches to VirtualBSD 9.0 and, barring last minute disasters, everything should be ready in day or two — stay tuned or, better yet, follow @VirtualBSD on Twitter!
RT.
More technical users can do a straight up FreeBSD install from the same disc if they prefer, and can make use of the full ports tree as their primary package management in PC-BSD if it suits them as well. They can also choose between Gnome, XFCE, and LXDE in addition to KDE. Any of the other environments in the ports tree can be used as well provided the user is advanced enough to know what they’re looking for.
The main thing I’m trying to get across though is it’s a pureblooded FreeBSD system with a sane set of defaults and some extra, ultimately optional, tools in place to make life easier on those who simply want to use their system rather than get a crash course in low level administration.
The newly officially included lighter desktop environments and ~FreeBSD seem like a really good fit together (also from how those DEs seem partly more Unix-like, in the philosophies of their architectures); together with VM images, I will definitely be trying it out.
Too bad the setup ADSL USB “modems” will be probably even more awkward than under Linux… (such network access is fairly common in my areas, particularly in scenarios & on machines which tend to benefit most from lighter OS)
There is no need to assume that. FreeBSD hardware compatibility is not necessarily behind linux in all areas. The goals of Linux (in general; Linux with a capital L) and FreeBSD are not parallel and as such they focus on supporting different hardware. Look over the HCL and see if you can find your device:
http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/CURRENT/hardware/index.html
Note that this list is only TESTED hardware and is not a complete list of all devices that will work under any given driver.
Not really a problem for me …it’s just that such ADSL USB modems ( http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neostrada_TP the three popular ones are on the right – the article is about an offer from one (largest) company, but they are used by everybody) are a fairly usual, even expected sight in homes where there’s just one (working) oldish PC (the modems tend to be thrown in for free also with the least expensive ADSL subscriptions).
Soon comes essentially the end of XP, which most of such PCs run – wouldn’t be bad to have more light & straightforward options (for what is often essentially not much more than a browsing machine)
And yeah, the thing with goals is, *nix devs rarely use such modems, few have incentive to make the process with such modems smooth (while, of course, the traditional response from telecoms was to support basically only Windows) – in that light, BSDs are probably overall less likely to support them (a “very desktop” equipment, for one) than Linux.
Anyway, I scanned through that hw support list and there’s no indication that any USB ADSL modem (or drivers which would conceivably fit) is on it…
(there seem to be some solutions of course, for example http://speedtouch.sourceforge.net/index.php?/index.en.html , but such are… yeah, awkward)
Edited 2012-01-24 00:12 UTC
When I have time, sigh
I^aEURTMve planned to install FreeBSD and compile all the desktop software from ports, to see how much quicker it would be in comparison to packages or the PBI system of PCBSD – anyone done it? How does a FreeBSD desktop compare with a PCBSD desktop?
Oh and a word or caution ^aEUR“ last time I tried PCBSD the graphical installer mangled my partition table and I lost quite a few partitions, thankfully Testdisk can be quite handy but might be a good idea to have a recent backup.
I’m looking forward to trying it. I’d like to try BSD and this looks like the easiest version ot get into. Unfortunately version 8 would not boot properly on computers with mixed controllers. I hope this version boots correctly.
I’ve said it before and I have to say it again. These people have the SLOWEST MIRRORS EVER.