Dear All,

I'm well aware that comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc is probably not the
best audience for the following announcement, as you're probably
using FreeBSD on a daily basis and have little use for a desktop
oriented FreeBSD 9.0 distributed as a virtual machine.

Still, you might be interested in helping us spread the word, so
keep reading for the details.

Thank you for your time,

RT.

-- cut -- cut -- cut --

Introduction

VirtualBSD 9.0 is a desktop ready FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE built around the
XFCE Desktop Environment and is distributed as a VMware appliance that
can also be made to work with VirtualBox, so even non techies can try it
in a matter of minutes.

But we also wanted to provide good aesthetics and usability, therefore
we added many of the most common applications, plugins and multimedia
codecs. In other words, chances are that you will find VirtualBSD very
functional "right out of the box".

Does The World Really Need Another FreeBSD Distribution?

Probably not but, in our defense, this not a "distribution" or distro in
common parlance. Remember that VirtualBSD is built on FreeBSD 9.0, which
means that anyone with a bit of time (and lots of patience) could obtain
the same end result. If nothing else, we like to think of VirtualBSD as
a technology demonstrator -- and a good looking one at that!

Intended Audience

VirtualBSD is squarely aimed at people who:

1) Heard about it, but have never tried FreeBSD;

2) Wanted to, but didn't have enough time to build the system from
scratch;

3) Used FreeBSD in the past, but have since moved to a different OS and
are struck by nostalgia from time to time;

But you know what? We think that FreeBSD really deserves a bigger
following, so if we can motivate even a single person to upgrade from
this virtual installation to a real one we'll feel that our mission has
been accomplished and congratulate ourselves on a job well done! ;-)

Relevant Links

HOME: http://www.virtualbsd.info
FAQ:  http://www.virtualbsd.info/faq.html
Download: http://www.virtualbsd.info/virtualbsd-90.torrent

On 01/19/2012 03:36 AM, Reece Tarbert wrote:

I wonder, why the BSD people feel ashamed to call the variants as a
distribution. Were not BSD4.4 and earlier releases of UNIX called
Berkeley's Software Distribution? cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution

Thank God, you agree that it is not an easy or time consuming task to
build everything again and again even for an update or upgrade.

I find the Debian, ArchLinux and, or Gentoo's derivatives have better
package management and build systems. IMHO, it is time to overhaul and,
or replace the FreeBSD's ports or package management and build system.

Believe me or not, there could 100's of 1000s aspirants who would love
to try FreeBSD again, provided it ships better binary updates and, or
upgrades similar to most popular Linux distributions.

I Hope, you're already aware of the fact that Ubuntu or most of its
derivatives can be installed within a few minutes with a single click
and the users can try these off of a CD, DVD and memstick well before
they decide to install it onto a real/hard disk.

Is it possible to install/port the FreeBSD/VirtualBSD onto a memstick
and create persistent home and, or other mount points like Ubuntu?

--
Balwinder S "bdheeman" Dheeman
(http://werc.homelinux.net/contact/)

On 01/21/2012 08:42, Balwinder S Dheeman wrote:

Well, VirtualBSD is not really a variant, just a FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE
that has been packaged to make it attractive and, why not, "less
intimidating" for first timers. No to mention that nowadays we have
"distros" rather than "distributions" (a la distrowatch) and I'm not
saying it as a bad thing either, but we'd rather not give the wrong
impression or create false expectations.

This is a well know problem and probably a bigger one than hardware
support, but nowadays computers are fast enough that updating the
software in the ports collection is quite fast too -- unless it's
LibreOffice/OpenOffice or Java. But it's clear that it's one aspect that
could be improved considerably.

We considered PC-BSD style PBIs for a while, but we don't really like
the fact that each piece of software comes with its own copy of
libraries, binaries, man pages (and even include files) for its
requirements. Okay, disk space is cheap, but if a library gets updated
to offer added functionality or security patches, the installed software
won't take advantage of that.

Of course, but this doesn't really help the FreeBSD camp, does it? ;-)

Not as such, but it's certainly possible to copy everything on top of a
basic FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE installation to carry over "software and
environment" and then edit the relevant configuration files. It's not
for the faint of heart and certainly not for the impatient, but we might
even provide step by step instruction if there's enough interest.

Thank you for your feedback!

Reece