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- adolfojp, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23"Software packages are installed into their own separate directories, complete with libraries and all. The goal is to have installed programs be entirely self contained, so that if the lib's on the system change, the package will be unaffected. Each package is installed into its own subdirectory under "/usr/local/MyPrograms/". "
That statement alone convinced me of trying PC-BSD out.
Having shared libraries can be good to save hard drive space, yet, in our gigabyte world with unlimited software variations, it can be a more of a hassle than an advantage. - anirudhvr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Yes indeed. BSD is what powers many performance-critical servers around the world (Yahoo servers run on FreeBSD, for instance). Many of the longest-uptime servers in netcraft's list run BSD: http://uptime.netcraft.net/up/today/top.avg.html
Yes, that's 1449 days (=4 years!) - millixaw, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23BSD was never gone.
- mistshadow2k4, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20"BSD is back!"
Interesting. People keep saying BSD is dead, but it's always still been aorund, hasn't it? Maybe it never left? - flood6, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12That's odd, because the release notes were dated yesterday: http://www.pcbsd.org/?p=releasenotes
- rushfan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I think letting people choose is the best option.
- m00nmaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"What does PBI stand for?
PBI stands for Pc Bsd Installer."
It's only for PC-BSD. Not all BSDs. - flood6, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10"#1 distro", based on what? DistroWatch ranking? Market share? Quality? It's hard to tell these kind of things. I like Ubuntu, and there's no denying that's it's become popular, but calling it #1 is a damn bold statement.
To further conclude that it's because it uses GNOME is a non-sequitur. Maybe it's the community. Maybe it's the ease of installation. Maybe it's because they'll mail you as many installation disks as you want for free. Likely it's a combination of these things and more. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11I don't know much about BSD. What kind of stuff can I install? Is it easy to do? I'd like to try it out (need to wipe the Dapper Beta drive anyway), but I want to know if I should reinstall Breezy, or try PC-BSD first?
- Topslakr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Gnome does not a good desktop make. Ubuntu isn't #1 for its use of Gnome...Ubuntu has a number of features that people like. PC-BSD isn't going to be made or broken based on it's 'preferred desktop' and if you want Gnome.. it's easy enough to install.
- tuna1, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Did BSD ever leave?
- Zerfram, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Someone needed to make a good desktop BSD. Thanks to the PC-BSD Team and congrats on the 1.0 milestone!
- flex411, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Im glad BSD is back, now I can put it back on all my servers at home and work. Oh wait I never took it off them!
- Lounger540, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Plus isn't OpenBSD considered one of the most secure server OS's.
I wouldn't need to use it for anything, but in the server market i'm sure that bragging right
makes it far from dead. - celticeric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I tried it. I found PC-BSD to be easy to use, stable and fast. The big problem is the lack of ported software. There a limited number of packages available for this distro.
More stuff has been ported to linux and a Debian based distro like Ubuntu has a lot of packages to draw on. The poster mentioning that Gnome isn't available for this distro basically highlights that problem. With Debian or Ubuntu there is either a pre-packaged version or ported source code you can compile for basically anything.
You might also run into hardware problems. There are more linux drivers than there are BSD drivers for most hardware. - mesostinky, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9And then a buffer overflow comes out in libc and you have 30 apps all coded to their own older version of libc . Have fun managing that.
- regeya, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I'm not sure that Ubuntu is #1 because of GNOME, and I must point out that it's dead simple to install GNOME on PC-BSD. Honest!
I use Kubuntu rather than PC-BSD, so I'm one of those odd souls who wonder why GNOME seems to be the de-facto desktop Linux standard. KDE came first, and the primary reason for GNOME's existence isn't an issue anymore. Simple as that. GNOME is very user-friendly, but KDE is loaded with features. Having said that about KDE, my KDE desktop would look spartan to even a lot of Fluxbox users...but I'm getting off track here. :-) - ax0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Indeed, BSD was never "dead".
All the BSDs have been known for rock-solid stability, FreeBSD's better known for being the easiest of the "Big 3" (FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD) to use. FreeBSD has more GNU or GNU-esque userland bits in it than the others. FreeBSD tore me away from being a GNU/Linux fanboy back in the late 90's, before many people had even heard of Linux, much less actually USED it. Once I was accustomed to the BSD way, I bought a copy of OpenBSD at DefCon 6.
The main differences between Linux and BSD:
BSD's code has been under development for a longer period of time
There are less programmers working on BSD (less cooks in the kitchen as far as I'm concerned)
BSD's, particularly OpenBSD will NOT sacrifice stability or security to push alpha-level bleeding-edge hardware support.
Linux is one single kernel codebase (linux) re-packaged 50+ different ways (called Distributions)
The big 3 BSD's maintain their own kernel codebases, and hand-pick what makes it into the base install
As a general rule, though, once you know advanced command-line conventions in Linux or BSD, you can make the transition to other UNIX-Like platforms smoothly.
We'll see how far PC-BSD goes. I've been on the BSD bandwagon for quite a while now. This is probably the 5th recent fork of FreeBSD i've seen in recent memory, with DragonFly BSD, TrustedBSD, picoBSD, and Gentoo FreeBSD being among the others. We'll see how it goes for them. - anirudhvr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9BSD variations are much like linux (which is why they're all called 'unix'). FreeBSD is known for its rock-solid stability; OpenBSD for its built-in security features and NetBSD for its portability. PCBSD is based on FreeBSD, so I'd expect it to have the same stability (which is in part due to the excellent ports system). However, BSD distributions are mostly used for servers which just require raw performance and reliability, so support for the latest audio/graphics drivers might not be built in (you could always write your own :).
I'd suggest you try it out. It should be a reliable, sturdy OS that will get your work done. - Haplo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"This is pretty much how OS X .apps work too, which is also BSD based. "
This is pretty much how RISC OS (and Arthur) worked almost 20 years ago...
Installation was in many cases as much as drag and drop an application from floppy to harddisk. - gahal, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Speaking of packages, I see it uses "PBI" for its packages. I have never dabled in bsd before (outside of a bsd webserver where I used to work, but I hardly ever had to mess with it), is PBI common for BSD or is it something specific to this distro?
Also I'm assuming you can just compile software on the system when a package is not available for it, similar to in linux? BSD is similar enough to linux for most of the software written for linux to compile without problem right? - jdog1016, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Just to make sure you are all aware, DesktopBSD is another option with similar goals: http://www.desktopbsd.net
- sremick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm a FreeBSD user (yes on the desktop too, not just my servers)... I prefer Gnome, but I'll dig this anyway.
FreeBSD: If it's good enough for Yahoo, NYI, and The Matrix, it's good enough for me ;) - Lounger540, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is pretty much how OS X .apps work too, which is also BSD based.
Though major frameworks/libraries are shared, 95% of apps don't need any install/uninstall.
MS, Adobe and Apple pro-apps are the biggest exception to this rule, mostly due to their complexity and inter app connections. - Mardala, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"I don't know much about BSD. What kind of stuff can I install? Is it easy to do? I'd like to try it out (need to wipe the Dapper Beta drive anyway), but I want to know if I should reinstall Breezy, or try PC-BSD first?"
I've never tried PC-Bsd, but to answer your question it varies depending on the BSD. FreeBSD probably has the most wide application support, 10,000 in the ports database, where as OpenBSD is slower at releasing software so they can control vulnerable code. I've used FreeBSD off and on and love it. Its logical, easy to update and stable. You will probably find wider hardware support with a Linux distro, but FreeBSD would be my recommendation for a desktop. I am also starting to wonder if there will be the distro after distro affect with all these FreeBSD forks.
*edit* also anyone trying a BSD should bookmark this forum: www.bsdforums.org -- great resource. - adolfojp, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"What's the point of having a .pbi if the programs basically just need decompressing?"
A pbi allows you to install apps like you do on Windows.
To install: Double click it, it installs, adds the icons to the menu and the desktop.
To uninstall: Go to the Remove Programs menu and its done.
It is nice, simple, clean and elegant. It is in my opinion, one of the things that Linux still needs to become a desktop OS. - barbobot, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6"It is nice, simple, clean and elegant. It is in my opinion, one of the things that Linux still needs to become a desktop OS."
Linux already has this, but people tend to ignore it - MrGeneric, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Torrents? No joy with FTP.
- deepsub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4....long live BSD!
- gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm, just installed it and in clasic form, BSD is severely lacking in up-to-date hardware compatibility (network drivers). I was able to get my nForce4 jack working intermittantly after playing with the settings, but it was pretty unreliable. I also couldn't get 1280x1024 even after changing my XF86Config to have only that listed as a resolution. I did try out some of the PBI's, and other than not being able to get Flash working with Firefox (where is the necessary libflash pbi???) it was pretty slick. I have to say, though, while it may be a 1.0 release, it's definitely not ready for prime-time yet.
- SixtyWatt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I will give it a go. I had FreeBSD installed on my old desktop and I was pleased with it.
- BlackAdderIII, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"So FreeBSD is an attempt to bring Unix stability to the "average Joe's" desktop. Cool. But what can it do that OSX can't?"
Cost between 100 and 3000 dollars less to run (roughly). - gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Is there a torrent for it set up somewhere?
- m0laria, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6Does not having shared libraries also eliminate the speed benefit from two running programs using the same library? Or am I misunderstanding shared libraries ...
- pussfeller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Not using shared libraries, from a users point of view, would make dependency problems just go away.
I don't like wanting to use a svn version of something, that relies on a certain version of something else, and have it clash with the libraries the distro needs to use. Seems to me that ./configure make make install should compile everything the program needs and stick it somewhere nice and tucked away from everything else.
I can see how this could cause memory problems, however. - dipswitch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Since when can *BSD be pirated?
- Tsuroerusu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"KDE is very bloated."
What do you base that statement on? Unless you install every damn KDE app your distro includes, KDE is not bloated, when I installed the latest RC of SUSE 10.1 and looked under multimedia, there was one audio player (amaroK), one video player (Kaffeine) and so forth. - diabeticfeed, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Look into Klik for linux. Download one compressed file, double click and it runs ala OSX...
http://klik.atekon.de/ - Tsuroerusu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Probably not, as the number of Linux users are bigger by multitudes than the number of BSD users.
- muyuu, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I prefer Gnome for one sole reason: international IME support.
Last time I tried, KDE make it hell to use simultaneously Japanese, Chinese, Russian, English and other Latin-1 languages. I work in software i18n and for me this is a must. Asian input methods are underworked and you're left with a DIY approach or preaching all you need is GTK, thus you'd rather go Gnome. This was the state of things as of last year. - drewmeister, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Try the UK mirror. Worked for me. Speedy too.
- dukeinlondon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What about drivers ? Can one expect the same level of support as in Linux ?
- gotamd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1PC-BSD is definitely FreeBSD (6) under the hood.
- sirsteveh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Various linux distros do, in fact, have fairly simple package management. Take Arch Linux, for example. It uses pacman, which will not only download and install apps, but update them, remove them, manage dependancies, etc. That's not to say Arch is exactly your grandma's Linux, though (can you say "manual configuration"? :D).
- aplardi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I cannot wait to try this on a seperate box :)
- revidffum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I used to be Linux guy, back when RH didn't even have updates, apt or yum. Nothing worse in my opinion than "dependency hell". I met FreeBSD in 1999 and never went back. Anything Linux can run, I can run on my BSD box with Linux compat and I can change the compatibility on the fly if needed. Shockwave, flash, java-it all works on BSD.
I try the new flavors, fedora, ubuntu, gentoo, centos, but I stick with BSD. They all have desktops to fit individual preferences, enlightenment, fluxbox, blackbox, kde, gnome, but until UNIX based systems have integrated policy management for us sysadmins (such as Zenworks) and your user base doesn't have to be geeks to use it, the desktop will stay owned by M$ in the enterprise, which in my opinion is a travesty. BSD/Linux is way more secure on every level. I will wait till PC BSD 2.0 to try this one out... - spikeb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think a similar project, only using GNOME, would be neat.
- Mardala, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How about provide the underlying structure from which your OSx runs? How about pioneer the backbone of the internet? (well from a BSD perspective) ... I agree its not an average Joe's desktop experience, but neither is running a network or developing an OS.
- joesnow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1why the hell would u -digg for a torrent link to the free software? .... anyway, just because it's from piratebay doesnt mean it's pirated, they offer a lot of free apps, it's just a torrent site.
- dragonopolis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes BSD user base is not as big as Linux but BSD has been around alot longer. Just in case nobody mentioned this yet, PCBSD can use the 10000 ports software available to FreeBSD users.
"Note to Beginners"
Please read up on how to use the FreeBSD port system. You can break your PCBSD OS if you install something incorrectly. Please read the how to at the PCBSD website as well as any information the FreeBSD website has.
Enjoy PCBSD ! -
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