Best way to switch from Linux to BSD
Jason Hsu
Are there any good tutorials for using BSD on the desktop? I'm having much more difficulty finding good information on BSD than was the case for Linux. In retrospect, this shouldn't be a surprise given that Linux is relatively mainstream while BSD is very obscure.
Some questions:
1. Is it possible to install KDE, GNOME, or other DE from the FreeBSD CD in a reasonable amount of time? KDE and GNOME are huge programs, and having to download them would take too long.
2. What's lighter than PCBSD and GhostBSD? I tried the live DVDs on my laptop (1.4 GHz processor, 1.25 GB of RAM) and found both BSD distros to be very sluggish. Ubuntu and Mint were faster and fit on a CD, and these two distros have been criticized as bloatware. Also, the keyboard didn't work in GhostBSD.
3. How do I triple-boot Puppy Linux, antiX/Swift Linux, and DragonflyBSD? I already use a Puppy Linux/Swift Linux dual boot. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what to put in the menu.lst file to allow DragonflyBSD to boot. (By contrast, antiX Linux and Swift Linux automatically add the appropriate entries in menu.lst.)
4. What are the Linux Mint and Puppy Linux of the BSD universe? I consider these two distros to set the standard in the Linux universe, because they're so user-friendly. These are the distros I've set out to compete against in developing Swift Linux.
--
Jason Hsu <jhsu8...@jasonhsu.com>
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Doug Barton
> I've been trying to switch from Linux to BSD for my everyday computing (email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.), but I couldn't get things to work properly. I've been so spoiled by the quickness and user-friendliness of antiX/Swift Linux and Puppy Linux for so long. I have a backlog of stuff to do, so I'm sticking to Linux for now as my main OS. However, I might try BSD in VirtualBox and on my laptop.
>
> Are there any good tutorials for using BSD on the desktop?
Simple answer, if your only goal is to have a Unix-like desktop, you're
better off sticking with Linux. FreeBSD is not really focused on desktop
use, whereas a lot of the Linux distributions are, and if you're happy
with the ones you are using there is no good reason to switch.
If you want to use FreeBSD as a desktop because you have a desire to
learn FreeBSD, your best bet is visit the home page at
http://www.FreeBSD.org/, look under Documentation, and start reading the
Handbook.
hope this helps,
Doug
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Jeremy Chadwick
> I've been trying to switch from Linux to BSD for my everyday computing
> (email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.), but I couldn't get
> things to work properly. I've been so spoiled by the quickness and
> user-friendliness of antiX/Swift Linux and Puppy Linux for so long. I
> have a backlog of stuff to do, so I'm sticking to Linux for now as my
> main OS. However, I might try BSD in VirtualBox and on my laptop.
>
> much more difficulty finding good information on BSD than was the case
> for Linux. In retrospect, this shouldn't be a surprise given that
> Linux is relatively mainstream while BSD is very obscure.
If desktop BSD is more your style, you might want to look into using
PC-BSD, which is based on FreeBSD. You did mention it in the portion of
your text that I removed though. But I have no experience with it (I
mainly use FreeBSD for servers).
To answer your Subject question directly: I can't speak for others, but
the way I did it was by giving up Linux entirely and forcing myself to
use FreeBSD. Gaining familiarity took years upon years. In no way
shape or form do I think I'm a "FreeBSD master" -- there is a lot of
change going on, and a lot of pieces to the OS that I do not understand.
That is just the nature of the beast, and applies to all OSes -- even
Windows. I'm just now learning PowerShell at my workplace; my brain
feels like it's full.
Maybe a sympathy (empathy?) story will relieve some of your stress and
keep your spirits up.
I started with Linux 0.99pl45, installed on my 486 via floppies. I
helped test CSLIP code since Oregon State at the time was putting some
new Annex dial-in boxes into place that offered CSLIP vs. SLIP. The
concept of Slackware existed but was basically just "a thing to get
Linux on your machine"; there weren't other choices (to my knowledge).
The last Linux version I used heavily was the 1.3.x series, and did
experiment with the 2.0.x series as well.
There were 4 reasons I gave up on Linux (for our servers):
1) I was sick and tired of having to apply patches on top of patches.
To fix a serious bug or add a needed feature in the kernel, you'd have
to dig through mailing lists, find a patch -- usually 30-40KBytes in
size -- and apply it. Then if you needed something else, you'd have to
do the same thing -- and the patches usually were from different people
and (key point) did not apply cleanly with one another. In the late
1.3.x days I was literally applying 8 or 9 patches (anyone remember the
"ac" patchset from Alan Cox? Still a sore spot for me), and having to
re-work them by hand almost every time. Amusingly, parts of FreeBSD are
becoming like this, but the source code is still managed centrally and
you get everything you need from csup/src-all for a working system.
2) Package management didn't exist. There was this "thing" ( ;-) ) that
eventually got created called RPM, but it didn't jibe with what
Slackware did, so you ended up with a mix-match system: some programs
built from source, others from RPMs. I preferred to build everything
from source, dropped it all into /usr/src, made my own scripts to run
configure/make/etc. with the right arguments, and so on. I did all the
dependency management myself by hand. The experience I gained from this
still applies even today.
3) Our systems were rooted on two separate occasions. On both occasions
the attackers gained access through combinations of badly-written
daemons and kernel exploits (and in the case of the latter, often ones
which hadn't been announced on lists; there was no official "security
mailing list" back then -- remember, no distros). FreeBSD was known for
being more secure (not flawless, just better in this regard) at the
time.
There's also something that doesn't get discussed often enough: Linux is
incredibly popular and as such is a huge focus for l33t h4x0r k1dz. The
BSDs are not so much a focus, which is a big plus.
Example: recently one of our users had his website compromised through a
PHP bug, and the attacker attempted to install a rootkit for Linux.
Naturally it broke (it even had "FreeBSD support" in it, but obviously
the kids didn't test it ever, which further supports my point). I had
the users' website down for about 24 hours while I did a security
analysis, found the hole, restored his account from a 16-hour-old
backup, and immediately had him upgrade the software so he wouldn't be
compromised again.
4) The state of the firewall stack in Linux was -- and still is -- a
complete disgrace. This actually *is* a slam against Linux. :-)
ipfwadm, then ipchains, then iptables. FreeBSD ipfw was a godsend
compared to those, and today, pf(4) blows everything out of the water.
One of my home routers is Linux-based and every time I have to bust out
"iptables -L" I want to throw up. I "understand" it, I just think it's
a horrible way to represent and control a firewalling layer.
My personal opinion is that you're being impatient -- though your
concerns and questions being justified/legitimate, please don't get me
wrong or take that as an insult. I've only seen you on the list
recently asking some good questions, but you may be feeling what I did
when I switched from Linux to FreeBSD -- very overwhelmed. Everything
was so different, lots of useful or convenient things didn't seem to
exist (and still don't), and finding the BSD version of a Linux "thing"
was a scary ordeal.
Anyway...
I tend to recommend to people that they use whatever OS they prefer,
whatever works best for them, whatever meets their familiarity levels.
If that's Linux, awesome. If NetBSD, awesome. If Windows XP, awesome.
If OS X, awesome. With virtualisation out there -- things like VMware
Workstation, Xen, etc. you can experiment with a new OS without leaving
your current one. Maybe that would be a better choice for you right
now?
--
| Jeremy Chadwick j...@parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |
Gour
Jason Hsu <jhsu8...@jasonhsu.com> wrote:
> I've been trying to switch from Linux to BSD for my everyday
> computing (email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.), but I
> couldn't get things to work properly.
I'm in the same boat, and will try today again...
> Are there any good tutorials for using BSD on the desktop? I'm
> having much more difficulty finding good information on BSD than was
> the case for Linux. In retrospect, this shouldn't be a surprise
> given that Linux is relatively mainstream while BSD is very obscure.
I can recommend to take a look at PC-BSD (http://www.pcbsd.org/) and
it handbook (http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/PC-BSD_Users_Handbook)
which gives lot of information how to install & use it.
> 1. Is it possible to install KDE, GNOME, or other DE from the
> FreeBSD CD in a reasonable amount of time? KDE and GNOME are huge
> programs, and having to download them would take too long.
Try latest PC-BSD 9-0 snapshot which offers KDE/GNOME/LXDE/XFCE for
install and some other WMs (awesome, etc.)
> 2. What's lighter than PCBSD and GhostBSD? I tried the live DVDs
> on my laptop (1.4 GHz processor, 1.25 GB of RAM) and found both BSD
> distros to be very sluggish.
Don't know. I just played with PC-BSD which I'll put on my desktop
(5yr old laptop is already running PC-BSD with XFCE).
Maybe the problem was KDE if you installed that DE.
> 3. How do I triple-boot Puppy Linux, antiX/Swift Linux, and
> DragonflyBSD?
PC-BSD handbook gives information how to dual-boot with GRUB.
I personally did not try since I want to migrate from Linux and won't
keep GRUB.
> 4. What are the Linux Mint and Puppy Linux of the BSD universe? I
> consider these two distros to set the standard in the Linux
> universe, because they're so user-friendly. These are the distros
> I've set out to compete against in developing Swift Linux.
I never used Linux Mint nor Puppy Linux, but I believe that
e.g. PC-BSD wants to be something like Ubuntu Linux in regard to its
usability.
In the last ~4yrs I use Archlinux for which I several times heard it
is "the most BSD-like distro" (Prior to Arch, I spent >5yrs with
Gentoo).
However, there is one nice feature of PC-BSD coming in 9.0 and may be
used in other BSD-es as well. Please, read this paper:
http://blog.pcbsd.org/2011/03/formal-paper-on-new-pbi-9-format/
All the best with your switch. ;)
Sincerely,
Gour
--
“In the material world, conceptions of good and bad are all mental
speculations…” (Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu)
http://atmarama.net | Hlapicina (Croatia) | GPG: CDBF17CA
Paul A. Procacci
(Highly Opinionated Piece)
> Are there any good tutorials for using BSD on the desktop? I'm having much more difficulty finding good information on BSD than was the case for Linux. In retrospect, this shouldn't be a surprise given that Linux is relatively mainst
ream while BSD is very obscure.
PC-BSD is probably your best bet. (http://www.pcbsd.org/)
With that said, I recall some debate a while back, but it's my opinion that FreeBSD doesn't make the greatest desktop OS. There are many obstacles to getting things working properly. There are lots of examples to choose from, but I'll start with two in particular that are a necesity for me: skype, wine (amd64)
Naturally, it's been several months since I've tried and the above might have changed, but certianly it is a headache. The problem is really the software vendors whom target Linux (alsa crap for example). That doesn't mean you can't ru
n FreeBSD as a desktop (or any variant thereof), I've done it for many many years, but at this time I stick to windows as I'm a heavy gamer.
In regards to being obscure, it's my belief that FreeBSD as a desktop is limping by, but when you get right down to it, it makes for a wonderful server, probably the best there is.
>
> Some questions:
> 1. Is it possible to install KDE, GNOME, or other DE from the FreeBSD CD in a reasonable amount of time? KDE and GNOME are huge programs, and having to download them would take too long.
You can either a) install it from cd like you mentioned or b) install it using the pkg_add command: pkg_add -r kdebase4
The same goes for gnome. pkg_add -r gnome2 (I think)
> 2. What's lighter than PCBSD and GhostBSD? I tried the live DVDs on my laptop (1.4 GHz processor, 1.25 GB of RAM) and found both BSD distros to be very sluggish. Ubuntu and Mint were faster and fit on a CD, and these two distros hav
e been criticized as bloatware. Also, the keyboard didn't work in GhostBSD.
This is the FreeBSD mailing list. The question regarding GhostBSD is probably better suited for that mailing list. Your claim about Ubuntu and Mint being faster should be backed up with evidence. Quite the contrary I find FreeBSD to *feel* faster than any linux distro I've tried. Obviously this is highly opinionated.
> 3. How do I triple-boot Puppy Linux, antiX/Swift Linux, and DragonflyBSD? I already use a Puppy Linux/Swift Linux dual boot. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what to put in the menu.lst file to allow DragonflyBSD to boot.
(By contrast, antiX Linux and Swift Linux automatically add the appropriate entries in menu.lst.)
Not sure. I don't use grub. Sorry.
> 4. What are the Linux Mint and Puppy Linux of the BSD universe? I consider these two distros to set the standard in the Linux universe, because they're so user-friendly. These are the distros I've set out to compete against in devel
oping Swift Linux.
I don't know what these distros are. Should they be a desktop environment, I believe PC-BSD is what you should be comparing them to. I don't think PC-BSD is as polished as any desktop linux distro.
#######################################
#######################################
Just to reiterate:
Do I love FreeBSD..absolutely, my favorite OS in fact. Does it have problems in the Desktop area of all things...absolutely...but it my perception that it's a server OS anyways.
If skype, wine and other little tidbits worked properly I'd be using FreeBSD as a desktop hands down.
Linux I keep for *other stuff* that commercial vendors won't budge on, and that's probably all, otherwise (IMHO) it's garbage.
Not sure if any of this helps...I hope it does.
>
> --
> Jason Hsu <jhsu8...@jasonhsu.com>
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> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stabl...@freebsd.org"
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Michal Varga
opinions that might actually *not* suit your personal needs. But you
asked.
On Tue, 2011-03-29 at 01:32 -0400, Jason Hsu wrote:
> Some questions:
> 1. Is it possible to install KDE, GNOME, or other DE from the FreeBSD
> CD in a reasonable amount of time? KDE and GNOME are huge programs,
> and having to download them would take too long.
I feel that this was alwas the case, so yes as far as I know (haven't
been installing any stock off-the-disc FreeBSD recently). But I can
hardly imagine any FreeBSD "power user" (what a silly term that is
anyway) that doesn't want to build his own, *proper* and properli
fine-tuned FreeBSD. If prebuilt packages are what you're looking for,
you are most probably not looking for FreeBSD, but something like a
PC-BSD or a similar toy.
FreeBSD is, to help you draw a comparison, very close to the Gentoo of
the Linux world. Hope that clears some things up.
> 2. What's lighter than PCBSD and GhostBSD? I tried the live DVDs on
> my laptop (1.4 GHz processor, 1.25 GB of RAM) and found both BSD
> distros to be very sluggish. Ubuntu and Mint were faster and fit on a
> CD, and these two distros have been criticized as bloatware. Also,
> the keyboard didn't work in GhostBSD.
Deploy your own fine tuned FreeBSD (not that there is any other way to
properly use FreeBSD in a single/home configuration anyway). After that,
build and install the ports you need, properly configure them (both
compile-time and run-time). There is nothing more lighter, adn faster,
you could ever get from anywhere.
Comparison with the monstrous bloatware the kind of Ubuntu and Mint is
really silly, probably comparison with ArchLinux cold still hold
somehow, but even that's a borderline case. The comparison you're
looking for again is "Gentoo".
Also somewhat more opinionated piece: Get a real desktop computer.
Seriously. You don't want to build your own ports/packages on a 1.4GHz
laptop, or at least, not for too long (pun intended).
> 3. How do I triple-boot Puppy Linux, antiX/Swift Linux, and
> DragonflyBSD?
I'm not sure that's the best question for a FreeBSD mailing list, or at
least, I'm not able to anwser to that.
> 4. What are the Linux Mint and Puppy Linux of the BSD universe? I
> consider these two distros to set the standard in the Linux universe,
> because they're so user-friendly. These are the distros I've set out
> to compete against in developing Swift Linux.
>
None, there is no Windows Vista equivalent for a FreeBSD world. Again -
if that's what you're looking for instead of a hand-built and fine-tuned
operating system, you're much better with systems like PC-BSD. FreeBSD
won't do you much good and only hinder you in this case.
FreeBSD is an amazing desktop OS (which I say as an exclusive FreeBSD
desktop user for a decade, so I probably even have a little bit of
experience in that field, in contrast with 'some' other specific people
that replied to you before me), but only If you're looking to put what
FreeBSD offers into good use (that is, for a start - a solid, clean,
polished and very modular and maintaineable OS).
But the feel I get from your questions is that you're really looking for
a magical Windows Vista clone, but with a magical BSD sticker that will
magically raise your horse power just by the sheer magical power of its
own awesomeness. It really doesn't work that way.
I mean, seriously - "Linux Mint"? (Yes, and sadly, I know it well, but
I'm somewhat baffled that you might be actually looking for that *again*
in a BSD world, like if the Linux version wasn't enough for a lifetime).
So honestly, In that case, for the love of god, at least get a proper
Mac. Because that's what you're in fact looking for.
m.
(Disclaimer: I'm in no way trolling and everything I wrote is completely
dead serious.)
--
Michal Varga,
Stonehenge (Gmail account)
Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
> I've been trying to switch from Linux to BSD for my everyday computing
> (email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.), but I couldn't get things to
> work properly. I've been so spoiled by the quickness and user-friendliness
> of antiX/Swift Linux and Puppy Linux for so long. I have a backlog of stuff
> to do, so I'm sticking to Linux for now as my main OS. However, I might try
> BSD in VirtualBox and on my laptop.
>
> Are there any good tutorials for using BSD on the desktop? I'm having much
> more difficulty finding good information on BSD than was the case for Linux.
> In retrospect, this shouldn't be a surprise given that Linux is relatively
> mainstream while BSD is very obscure.
>
> Some questions:
>
> 1. Is it possible to install KDE, GNOME, or other DE from the FreeBSD CD
> in a reasonable amount of time? KDE and GNOME are huge programs, and having
> to download them would take too long.
>
> 2. What's lighter than PCBSD and GhostBSD? I tried the live DVDs on my
> laptop (1.4 GHz processor, 1.25 GB of RAM) and found both BSD distros to be
> very sluggish. Ubuntu and Mint were faster and fit on a CD, and these two
> distros have been criticized as bloatware. Also, the keyboard didn't work
> in GhostBSD.
>
> 3. How do I triple-boot Puppy Linux, antiX/Swift Linux, and DragonflyBSD?
> I already use a Puppy Linux/Swift Linux dual boot. For the life of me, I
> couldn't figure out what to put in the menu.lst file to allow DragonflyBSD
> to boot. (By contrast, antiX Linux and Swift Linux automatically add the
> appropriate entries in menu.lst.)
>
> 4. What are the Linux Mint and Puppy Linux of the BSD universe? I
> consider these two distros to set the standard in the Linux universe,
> because they're so user-friendly. These are the distros I've set out to
> compete against in developing Swift Linux.
>
> --
> Jason Hsu <jhsu8...@jasonhsu.com>
>
1. Within FreeBSD RELEASE 8.2 DVD , there are GNOME , and KDE . Therefore ,
it is not necessary to download them .
During install , both of them may be installed . After installation , it
is possible to select either GNOME or
KDE by specifying them in rc.conf , or .xinitrc files .
All of these steps are explained very well in the Handbook .
There is NO need to compile FreeBSD for installation , but if it is
necessary to customize some of its features , it can be compiled by using
information given in the Handbook .
2. I am experiencing very slow behavior in amd 64 Release 8.2 ( I could NOT
be able to understand the reason ,
FreeBSD base is very fast but problem is GNOME and KDE ) , but i386
Release 8.2 is sufficiently fast .
I am using Intel DG965WH main board which may be the cause of slowness ,
but I do not know , because I do not have any other main board to check
apart from the fact that other distributions ( other than than BSD based )
on the same main board are not exhibiting such a slow behavior . I think ,
this is a temporary problem and in the new stable releases , this problem
will not be present .
3. Personally I never use any hard disk for multiple operating systems .
4. PC-BSD is very user-friendly with respect to installation and usage .
Most parameters are set in the distribution . It comes with GNOME , KDE
( default ) , XFCE . Any one of them selectable in any time during boot .
PC-BSD is completely based on FreeBSD with added ready made GNOME , KDE ,
XFCE and others as pre-installed . It is possible to install FreeBSD (
ignoring PC-BSD added features ) during installation of PC-BSD as an
alternative .
FreeBSD is not worse than PC-BSD but it requires very well knowledge of the
Handbook , because all of the settings should be specified by the user in
configuration files .
FreeBSD is a well-designed and important operating system and it is a
complex software to perform significant processing in servers .
Single user desktop side is a little weak with respect to parameter settings
.
Instead of being permissively set defaults , they are set restrictively .
This feature is causing very big difficulty for the beginners and preventing
wide adoption ( with respect to my opinion ) .
For example , my need is to use USB stick and DVD/CD auto-mount frequently .
I have set all of the parameters with respect to the information given in
the Handbook . Even I studied PC-BSD to complete possible missing parts .
As a root , auto mount is possible in GNOME or KDE as when they are inserted
, it is possible to see their contents by the file manages ( Nautilus or
Dolphin ) . When I login as a user , a very ridiculous feature called
PolicyKit , is saying that mount is NOT permitted although all of the
parameters are set by the root permitting user mounts of these media . Why ?
I do not know .
In PC-BSD , this is possible . This shows that , I am missing some settings
, but I could not be able to find which ones .
This very small difficulty is preventing my daily use of FreeBSD and it is
diverting me to Linux x86_64 .
( GNOME and KDE in PC-BSD Release 8.2 are very slow in amd64 , means they
are unusable ) .
My suggestion is to use another computer for installing and working on
FreeBSD , PC-BSD to properly learn
their structure instead of trying to install them in existing hard disk with
actually used for other operating systems .
If your laptop/computer allows USB boots , it is also possible to use
external hard disks for installations and using them . Even they can be
installed on USB sticks having sufficient capacity . I prefer external hard
disks because their prices are not very higher than USB sticks ( for example
, 32 GB USB sticks ranges from $ 55 to $ 110 , whereas external 500 GB HDD
prices ranges from $ 68 to $ 100 given in an internet site of a computer
shop with the advantage that HDD is much and much faster than USB sticks . )
If your need is daily use of FreeBSD or PC-BSD , PC-BSD is easier to use .
Its additional package system is PBI but it is possible to install any port
or package from FreeBSD by using pkg_add , pkg_delete , pkg_info , etc. , in
an ( administrative terminal window selected from menus ) .
Thank you very much .
Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
Christian Walther
On 29 March 2011 11:33, Michal Varga <varga....@gmail.com> wrote:
> As with other people that replied before - my opinions reflect my
> opinions that might actually *not* suit your personal needs. But you
> asked.
>
> On Tue, 2011-03-29 at 01:32 -0400, Jason Hsu wrote:
>> Some questions:
>> 1. Is it possible to install KDE, GNOME, or other DE from the FreeBSD
>> CD in a reasonable amount of time? KDE and GNOME are huge programs,
>> and having to download them would take too long.
>
> I feel that this was alwas the case, so yes as far as I know (haven't
> been installing any stock off-the-disc FreeBSD recently). But I can
> hardly imagine any FreeBSD "power user" (what a silly term that is
> anyway) that doesn't want to build his own, *proper* and properli
> fine-tuned FreeBSD. If prebuilt packages are what you're looking for,
> you are most probably not looking for FreeBSD, but something like a
> PC-BSD or a similar toy.
What's the benefit of building everything from source? Yes, you can
configure some of the ports, but in these days you'll end up with
stuff you don't want to have anyway. I'm a zsh user and have hardly
any need for bash, except that there are ports that have it as run
and/or build dependency. And I reckon it's rather difficult to setup a
system without having python and ruby installed.
Compiling from source can be done on fast, modern systems, e.g. amd64.
My primary "workstation" is a rusty Thinkpad T30. Building all ports
from scratch takes two days, and we're not talking about any IDE.
Additionally, using compiler optimization doesn't seem to be that
recommended anymore, since it can break code, thus leading to nasty
results. Which is why several developers state in their trouble
shooting guide to rebuild their application with default settings
before opening a bug report. This further decreases the benefit of
compiling everything from scratch.
FreeBSDs resource utilization is rather low, which makes it a perfect
OS for smaller or older systems (NetBSD is best here, I guess). And
you probably don't want to build ports on such a system. Which is why
I am really thankful that there are pre built packages available, and
that people are keeping it up to date.
Besides: I think it's one of FreeBSDs strength that you can decide not
only on how to use it, but on how to install it. You have the choice
to install FreeBSD and compile from ports, install FreeBSD and use
packages, or use PC-BSD with a juicy graphical installer.
It opens our beloved OS to a wider audience and makes it more suitable
for different tasks.
>> 2. What's lighter than PCBSD and GhostBSD? I tried the live DVDs on
>> my laptop (1.4 GHz processor, 1.25 GB of RAM) and found both BSD
>> distros to be very sluggish. Ubuntu and Mint were faster and fit on a
>> CD, and these two distros have been criticized as bloatware. Also,
>> the keyboard didn't work in GhostBSD.
>
> Deploy your own fine tuned FreeBSD (not that there is any other way to
> properly use FreeBSD in a single/home configuration anyway). After that,
> build and install the ports you need, properly configure them (both
> compile-time and run-time). There is nothing more lighter, adn faster,
> you could ever get from anywhere.
This is true, but can be done with packages as well.
> Comparison with the monstrous bloatware the kind of Ubuntu and Mint is
> really silly, probably comparison with ArchLinux cold still hold
> somehow, but even that's a borderline case. The comparison you're
> looking for again is "Gentoo".
>
> Also somewhat more opinionated piece: Get a real desktop computer.
> Seriously. You don't want to build your own ports/packages on a 1.4GHz
> laptop, or at least, not for too long (pun intended).
And again: Packages.
It depends on the OP what he considers being the best for his
purposes. I agree with you on a streamlined FreeBSD install w/o any
unnecessary packages being added. Which means I would rather use Xfce
instead of KDE or Gnome. Maybe even a nice window manager.
[...]
> FreeBSD is an amazing desktop OS (which I say as an exclusive FreeBSD
> desktop user for a decade, so I probably even have a little bit of
> experience in that field, in contrast with 'some' other specific people
> that replied to you before me), but only If you're looking to put what
> FreeBSD offers into good use (that is, for a start - a solid, clean,
> polished and very modular and maintaineable OS).
This is a two sided sword..
Yes, FreeBSD can be an amazing desktop OS
- it provides rock stable base system
- changes are done with continuity in mind
- it contains a good choice of WiFi driver
- it supports suspend, hibernate and power management
- nearly every interesting piece of OSS is available for it
On the downside there seem to be some work needing to be done IRT
kernel based 3D acceleration. I don't know the current status, but the
last I heard was that NVidias drivers can't be ported to FreeBSD
because the kernel lacks some functionality required (something
related to addressing the graphics board directly from software,
AFAIK).
So if you want the latest features and eye candy (say, KDE4s Plasma)
and make heavy use of xcompmgr, there might be better choices.
The problem here is that "desktop OS" is not a well defined term. My
configuration consists of FreeBSD + Xorg + StumpWM (Lisp based tiling
WM) , the apps I am using are Firefox (or uzbl), Gimp, Xsane and lots
of urxvts with vim, mocp, mutt.
> But the feel I get from your questions is that you're really looking for
> a magical Windows Vista clone, but with a magical BSD sticker that will
> magically raise your horse power just by the sheer magical power of its
> own awesomeness. It really doesn't work that way.
Hm, not sure.
Most people get to know either Linux or Windows first, so they assume
that an OS w/o graphical installer has to be prehistoric stuff. That
it can be differently -- and that this mustn't be a big thing is step
two and three. ;)
Regards
Christian
Jeremy Chadwick
> What's the benefit of building everything from source? Yes, you can
> configure some of the ports, but in these days you'll end up with
> stuff you don't want to have anyway. I'm a zsh user and have hardly
> any need for bash, except that there are ports that have it as run
> and/or build dependency.
Apologies if I'm missing something here, but:
What if you're a zsh user who wants PCRE support, or a statically-linked
shell (for cases of emergency)? You get to rebuild from source, as the
package only provides what the defaults are (ZFS_PCRE=off). So, the
package wouldn't suffice:
# cd /usr/ports/shells/zsh
# make showconfig
===> The following configuration options are available for zsh-4.3.11:
ZSH_GDBM=off (default) "Enable GDBM support (GPL)"
ZSH_MEM=on (default) "Enable zsh-mem and zsh-secure-free options"
ZSH_MAILDIR=on (default) "Enable support for Maildirs in MAIL(PATH)"
ZSH_MULTIBYTE=on (default) "Enable multibyte character support"
ZSH_PCRE=off (default) "Enable PCRE support"
ZSH_STATIC=off (default) "Build static executable"
===> Use 'make config' to modify these settings
> And I reckon it's rather difficult to setup a system without having
> python and ruby installed.
Up until recent Apache 2.2.x releases, absolutely none of our systems
had Python installed (I'm still sore about that and would love to know
why it's suddenly needed). And absolutely none of them have Ruby. The
setup of these systems is far from difficult, and all systems are built
from ports/source too (sans 2 packages, see below).
> Besides: I think it's one of FreeBSDs strength that you can decide not
> only on how to use it, but on how to install it. You have the choice
> to install FreeBSD and compile from ports, install FreeBSD and use
> packages, or use PC-BSD with a juicy graphical installer.
Agreed.
> [talk about bloat, and how it's avoidable with packages]
This is not always the case. /etc/make.conf on our systems have lots of
WITHOUT_xxx=true entries, solely to diminish the amount of bloat by
removing unneeded features from ports/third-party software. Using a
package would pull in lots of dependencies -- the worst of which by far
is anything that pulls in X-related things -- which I don't want to deal
with.
The only packages we use are 1) perl and 2) python26, and that's because
the defaults there are decent/work great for us.
--
| Jeremy Chadwick j...@parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |
_______________________________________________
Christian Walther
On 29 March 2011 13:36, Jeremy Chadwick <fre...@jdc.parodius.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 12:59:24PM +0200, Christian Walther wrote:
[ZSH PCRE Support]
Up to now I probably had to need for pcre, since I haven't noticed
that it's not part of the package. ;)
And in case of an emergency I stick to /sbin/sh. :)
But I got your point: It does make sense to install from ports when
you want a configuration that's different to the port default.
>> And I reckon it's rather difficult to setup a system without having
>> python and ruby installed.
>
> Up until recent Apache 2.2.x releases, absolutely none of our systems
> had Python installed (I'm still sore about that and would love to know
> why it's suddenly needed). And absolutely none of them have Ruby. The
> setup of these systems is far from difficult, and all systems are built
> from ports/source too (sans 2 packages, see below).
Are we talking about desktops or servers? ;)
Of course the ports that end up on a system are related to the choices
that are being made in the first place. I think that the existence of
Ruby on my laptop is due to the fact that I installed portupgrade,
which can be easily avoided by using portmaster. On the other hand I'm
pretty sure that I have at least one other package installed that
relies on Ruby.
Maybe those two are bad examples because they are fairly wide spread
programming languages anyway, and as a user I want an app to perform
specific tasks. IMO Python nearly can't be avoided unless you avoid
some widespread applications, such as Gpodder and Gimp.
But downloading a pre built package saves me lots of time... :)
>> [talk about bloat, and how it's avoidable with packages]
>
> This is not always the case. /etc/make.conf on our systems have lots of
> WITHOUT_xxx=true entries, solely to diminish the amount of bloat by
> removing unneeded features from ports/third-party software. Using a
> package would pull in lots of dependencies -- the worst of which by far
> is anything that pulls in X-related things -- which I don't want to deal
> with.
Agreed, especially on servers.
For my own, very personal workload it's something different: I need to
administer it in my spare time, which happens to be exactly the time I
want to use it for other purposes. And compiling a port "in the
background" slows down my machine, partly because I'm kind of paranoid
and use geli.
Dealing with dependencies is an awkward business IMO, especially when
it comes to GUI based apps from the Gnome or KDE ecosystems. There are
several ports that are listed as Gtk- or Qt-based, instead of Gnome or
KDE, but somewhere have a dependency on Gnome or KDE base packages.
And eventually you'll end up having at least half of Gnome or KDE on
your harddisk anyway.
One of my favorite examples is (lib)smbclient: I don't use smb
anywhere and I don't want to have it on my system. Disabling it where
ever possible doesn't help much, because some ports rely on
libsmbclient during runtime. libgnome-vfs is another example and I
guess there was a port that requires libgnome-vfs to be compiled with
libsmbclient support. Oh yes, and there's dbus. And hal.
So in the end I decided that the time required to tweak the port
configuration is not worth the effort.
Which is not the fault of the ports system. My take is that nowadays
the number of dependencies increase. A normal IDE user probably won't
notice because he either has the dependencies installed, or just
doesn't care.
> The only packages we use are 1) perl and 2) python26, and that's because
> the defaults there are decent/work great for us.
I use ports on my home server, which is a quad core amd64. It's just
fun watching a compile, but it only takes minutes to build what I
consider my base packages (zsh, vim, screen/tmux). ;)
Regards
Christian
Michal Varga
On Tue, 2011-03-29 at 12:59 +0200, Christian Walther wrote:
> What's the benefit of building everything from source? Yes, you can
> configure some of the ports, but in these days you'll end up with
> stuff you don't want to have anyway. I'm a zsh user and have hardly
> any need for bash, except that there are ports that have it as run
> and/or build dependency. And I reckon it's rather difficult to setup a
> system without having python and ruby installed.
Well, port options aren't only about removing unneeded stuff, but also
the other way around - make that application actually able to perform
some task so in the end, you don't need three different ones to
successfully finish a single specific process.
Take, as one example, the mplayer/mencoder combo (which Thomas Zander
[re]started actively maintaining recently, and is doing an awesome job
with that). Get mplayer, turn off every possible option you can and all
you get is a glorified "hello world" program (well, it might be even
able to display that hello world graphically, yay).
Now do it the other way, learn what all the respective techs (and so
dependencies) mean and do, pull in whatever stuff you need to get your
work (or entertainment time or whatever else) done, fine tune your
compiler whistles (multimedia processing benefits heavily from extended
instruction sets, I obviously don't need to stress that), and poof, you
end up with a single most complete multimedia playback AND transcoding
package that covers most people's 99% needs [citation needed].
But many people don't get that (sometimes just simply don't know), so
they end up with systems polluted with multiple sets of multimedia
packages that "sometimes work, sometimes don't". Then a user comes to
you complaining how FreeBSD sucks, that this or that video stream
doesn't work, DVDs don't work, some things work in Totem, some only work
in crappy VLC, "ZOMG I need flashez for my Youtubez!" (yeah, sure you
do), some even keep Xine backends for "this or that that only plays with
it", some run Windows video encoding software over Wine to get their
stuff done (and crashing five times during the process). Now you ask the
guy -
"But why are you doing that? I'm perfectly sure that for example,
mplayer covers everything you just mentioned and I know first hand that
these things work there as they should, everybody does it, I do that
daily, for years straight without any issues."
"No no no they don't, look I tried it, it just said soemthing about not
supported or whatever and then crashed after or dunno it simply didn't
work, so I used Totem like that's the other media thingie and that
didn't work either dunno some graphics driver or what error heh but who
cares, brb going to boot up Windows".
"Sigh, fine, but then out of curiosity, where did you get that mplayer
of yours?"
"Like how, where? I only did the 'pkg_add -something mplayer' or
whatever like they said on the web, and it sucks and doesn't work, sorry
but it's the FreeBSD way, it's simply that FreeBSD is broken, and it
sucks, everybody says that, so it must be, like, true. Yeah."
"Duh.. Ok. Yeah then."
Now you probably see where I'm getting at with all the fine-tuning mumbo
and configurations and customizations. Yes, FreeBSD takes time, but it
gives you the possibility and opportunity to do it. You don't need to -
there are prebuilt generic packages that do generic stuff (somehow),
there are systems like PC-BSD that already come "complete" and well - do
stuff - somehow, but FreeBSD *lets* you do much more, the moment you
realize that you need to.
To put it as a hyperbole - if you just want generic stock off-the-shelf
crap, yes, FreeBSD has that (too). Some, or *most* of it might even
work. Some might be bloated, some might be insufficiently
'stock-configured' so instead of one, you will end up with system
stuffed with multiple applications of the same kind, only because "some
of them sometimes work with something and some with the rest". But for
people that want the control and need the control and need to get under
the hood and tune it for the best possible outcome, FreeBSD offers
everything all the way down like no other OS does.
It's probably not worth the hassle for your regular grandma, but then,
that's why there is this other "FreeBSD for dummies", it's called Mac
OSX. And it's pretty good.
> Compiling from source can be done on fast, modern systems, e.g. amd64.
> My primary "workstation" is a rusty Thinkpad T30. Building all ports
> from scratch takes two days, and we're not talking about any IDE.
You can always build your "tuned" ports infrastructure someplace else
and deploy everything on T30 via packages after (see what I did here?).
Sure, it's probably not worth it simply for a single personal machine
(you can keep running the T over night and let it crunch through your
own FreeBSD "universe", you rarely rebuild totally everything from
scratch), but try maintaining a larger workplace and the return is
instantly huge. That's when you realize what a lumbering 7-legged
dinosaur the stock FreeBSD is and why it needs to be cleansed with fire,
first, and repeatedly.
> Additionally, using compiler optimization doesn't seem to be that
> recommended anymore, since it can break code, thus leading to nasty
> results.
I wouldn't agree there. The basic O2 is perfectly safe for ages now (O3
not so, *but* depends on your time and resources to put into testing and
possible troublesolving, and even then you might still turn out to be a
winner in most cases in the end). Processor specific optimizations are a
must too, otherwise you don't even need the fancy new one with the
latest SSSSSE9-THIS-TIME-IN-STEREO, when your plan is to keep using just
the raw i386 out of it, that's like buying a latest state-of-the-art
sportbike and for the rest of the life keep dragging it tied behind a
Pinto.
> Which is why several developers state in their trouble
> shooting guide to rebuild their application with default settings
> before opening a bug report. This further decreases the benefit of
> compiling everything from scratch.
"State".
Several developers are simply lazy and nobody pays them to debug someone
elses issues. Keeping it simple and unified saves anyone's time, but
mostly theirs. I personally support this approach and everyone sane
should.
[I snipped a large part because this is getting seriously way too long,
but I agree with many of your points there, so now just to one more
thing...]
> On the downside there seem to be some work needing to be done IRT
> kernel based 3D acceleration. I don't know the current status, but the
> last I heard was that NVidias drivers can't be ported to FreeBSD
> because the kernel lacks some functionality required (something
> related to addressing the graphics board directly from software,
> AFAIK).
Nvidia has 100% support on FreeBSD (not comparable to their
Windows/Linux support, but great nevertheless):
http://www.nvidia.com/object/freebsd-x86-260.19.44-driver.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/freebsd-x64-260.19.44-driver.html
Nvidia's drivers on FreeBSD are pure complete awesome sauce and they
would cook you a dinner if you asked them to, and clean up in the
morning afterwards.
(No, really, I don't work for Nvidia and I'm probably years away from
any possibilities for fanboy-ishms, but this is how it really is.. So
you are mistaken, Nvidia single handedly saved FreeBSD on desktops many
years ago and does it till present times, over and over. No, they're not
that much into charity, but some of their corporate customers run
FreeBSD, so this is the outcome, and it's pretty good).
> So if you want the latest features and eye candy (say, KDE4s Plasma)
> and make heavy use of xcompmgr, there might be better choices.
Don't believe that (see above).
m.
--
Michal Varga,
Stonehenge (Gmail account)
Stephen Montgomery-Smith
> I've been trying to switch from Linux to BSD for my everyday computing (email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.), but I couldn't get things to work properly. I've been so spoiled by the quickness and user-friendliness of antiX/Swift Linux and Puppy Linux for so long. I have a backlog of stuff to do, so I'm sticking to Linux for now as my main OS. However, I might try BSD in VirtualBox and on my laptop.
>
Unix on SunOS, and so when I tried i386 Unix's, FreeBSD wasn't that hard
for me. I have slowly learned quite a lot about its inner workings.
From a system administrator's perspective, FreeBSD is pure delight.
But the desktop experience of Ubuntu is so easy, and it works so much
"out of the box" that I am switching to Ubuntu for a lot of my everyday
desktop needs. So, for example, getting flash to work properly with
firefox on amd64 is too much of a pain under FreeBSD. And my new ASUS
laptop has an elan touchpad, which Ubuntu could handle out of the box,
but FreeBSD couldn't recognize its special features.
One place I do use my computer a lot is with floating point numerically
intensive programming. I find that FreeBSD and Unix take turns as to
who does this the best. As of today, FreeBSD is definitely winning. So
I will always keep both OS's on my computers.
Another thing I love about the ports system in FreeBSD is that you can
compile the code yourself, switch on or off many of the features of that
particular piece of software, but still have it play nice with the
FreeBSD packaging system. Maybe there is a similar thing I can do with
Ubuntu, but I haven't figured it out yet. And I'm not prepared to go
another route like gentoo - what's the point when I already have FreeBSD.
John Baldwin
> On the downside there seem to be some work needing to be done IRT
> kernel based 3D acceleration. I don't know the current status, but the
> last I heard was that NVidias drivers can't be ported to FreeBSD
> because the kernel lacks some functionality required (something
> related to addressing the graphics board directly from software,
> AFAIK).
Actually, all of the kernel features NVidia needed were added in 7.3 and
newer and the nvidia driver works great on both i386 and amd64 now. You
can also use nvidia-settings to configure several things like multiple
monitors, etc. rather easily.
--
John Baldwin
Torfinn Ingolfsen
> I've been trying to switch from Linux to BSD for my everyday computing (email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.), but I couldn't get things to work properly.
> I've been so spoiled by the quickness and user-friendliness of antiX/Swift Linux and Puppy Linux for so long. I have a backlog of stuff to do, so I'm sticking to Linux for now as my main OS.
> However, I might try BSD in VirtualBox and on my laptop.
IMO; get a second machine (laptop or workstation / desktop) and install
FreeBSD on that. After you get it working the way you want, you can
dump your Linux machine.
> Are there any good tutorials for using BSD on the desktop? I'm having much more difficulty finding good information on BSD than was the case for Linux.
> In retrospect, this shouldn't be a surprise given that Linux is relatively mainstream while BSD is very obscure.
I really don't understand this question.
If you really are asking about *using* BSD on the desktop, there are
very few, if any, differences compared to Linux. The basic GUI is the
same (Xorg), the DE's are the same (the big ones being KDE, Gnome and
Xfce), and almost all user programs are the same. What is the
difference your perceive?
Myself, I have kept one laptop running Linux (Xubuntu), because of two
things:
a) it is very hard (in Norway at least) to find and buy a
laptop that will work almost 100% with FreeBSD, unless I want to
double (or more) the price I can get a good laptop for. Somehow,
Linux manages to adjust to most of the "fails to meet
specifications" problems of laptop vendors today.
b) Often, I need (or want) to check out a new service or program that
only runs on Linux (for the time being).
My main workstation is a desktop, running FreeBSD.
All my test machines (most of them have desktops installed) run
FreeBSD. Granted, many of them are triple-boot and run Linux and other
BSDs as well, for testing purposes.
My servers run FreeBSD.
HTH
--
Regards,
Torfinn Ingolfsen
Paul Schmehl
>
> But the desktop experience of Ubuntu is so easy, and it works so much
> "out of the box" that I am switching to Ubuntu for a lot of my everyday
> desktop needs.
Not to belabor the point, but this is precisely why I switched from FreeBSD
to Mac for my desktop. For a desktop OS I need something unix-like but
with good graphics and all the capabilities of flash, movies, etc., etc.
That can be done on FreeBSD, but it takes some work.
I work on servers. I don't want to work on my desktop. All my servers are
FreeBSD.
--
Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell
Paul Schmehl
wrote:
>
> Some questions:
> 1. Is it possible to install KDE, GNOME, or other DE from the FreeBSD CD
> in a reasonable amount of time? KDE and GNOME are huge programs, and
> having to download them would take too long.
I wouldn't recommend installing from the CD for two reasons. 1) The
installation is "old", so you will have to update it anyway. Why not just
build it from source to begin with? 2) You don't have the same flexibility
you do when installing it from ports. There you can pick and choose what
is installed.
Although you think of KDE as huge, it's actually made up of lots of little
pieces and parts, each of which get installed separately when you build
from source. So, you aren't downloading a monolith. You're fetching this
and building it, then that and building it until the entire thing is done.
What it *is* is time consuming.
> 3. How do I triple-boot Puppy Linux, antiX/Swift
> Linux, and DragonflyBSD? I already use a Puppy Linux/Swift Linux dual
> boot. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what to put in the
> menu.lst file to allow DragonflyBSD to boot. (By contrast, antiX Linux
> and Swift Linux automatically add the appropriate entries in menu.lst.)
Why triple boot when you can run VMs? When you triple boot you only have
access to one OS at a time. When you run VMs, you have access to all your
OSes all the time. Much handier and more useful, I think.
> 4. What are the Linux Mint and Puppy Linux of the BSD universe? I
> consider these two distros to set the standard in the Linux universe,
> because they're so user-friendly. These are the distros I've set out to
> compete against in developing Swift Linux.
FreeBSD is first and foremost a server OS. Desktop support is lacking when
compared to the other major OSes (Windows, Mac and Linux). You can make it
work, if you want to, but that's not what its primary function is.
If you want a user friendly desktop OS, FreeBSD is probably not your best
choice.
Andriy Gapon
> FreeBSD is first and foremost a server OS. Desktop support is lacking when
> compared to the other major OSes (Windows, Mac and Linux). You can make it work,
> if you want to, but that's not what its primary function is.
Chiming in on a random post.
FreeBSD is whatever its users and developers make it to be.
FreeBSD is positioned as a general purpose OS and different people use it in very
different ways. From embedded through servers to desktops. Yes, really.
You can share your experience about FreeBSD as a desktop, I can share mine (which
is quite different from yours), those would be interesting (and perhaps useful)
anecdotes.
But, please, let's refrain from labeling FreeBSD and cornering it into some niche.
--
Andriy Gapon
Michal Varga
> FreeBSD is first and foremost a server OS.
Could you support your claim with some examples, please?
> Desktop support is lacking when compared to the other major OSes
> (Windows, Mac and Linux).
Here too. How is "desktop support" on FreeBSD lacking?
> You can make it
> work, if you want to, but that's not what its primary function is.
Where can I find some detailed information about what is FreeBSD's
"primary funtion" and what does that even mean in the first place?
> If you want a user friendly desktop OS, FreeBSD is probably not your best
> choice.
Why? How is KDE, Gnome, XFCE or some potential other desktop environment
different from the literally exactly same one running on, say, Linux?
m.
--
Michal Varga,
Stonehenge (Gmail account)
Nikola Pavlović
>
> On the downside there seem to be some work needing to be done IRT
> kernel based 3D acceleration. I don't know the current status, but the
> last I heard was that NVidias drivers can't be ported to FreeBSD
> because the kernel lacks some functionality required (something
> related to addressing the graphics board directly from software,
> AFAIK).
> and make heavy use of xcompmgr, there might be better choices.
As others have pointed out NVidia drivers for FreeBSD have been
available for some time, and they work just fine.
As far as eye candy goes, I assure you KDE Plasma bells and whistles
(compositing etc.) work just fine even on a 9 year old Pentium 4 w/ 1GB
RAM and an NVidia GeForce 6200. I'm actually amazed how well it works,
it's faster than XFCE on Slackware was... Weird stuff. O.o (I'm not
really implying anything, just noticing something I didn't expect.)
--
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Christian Walther
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 12:59:24PM +0200, Christian Walther wrote:
> As others have pointed out NVidia drivers for FreeBSD have been
> available for some time, and they work just fine.
Yes, thanks for pointing that out, everybody. :)
> As far as eye candy goes, I assure you KDE Plasma bells and whistles
> (compositing etc.) work just fine even on a 9 year old Pentium 4 w/ 1GB
> RAM and an NVidia GeForce 6200. I'm actually amazed how well it works,
> it's faster than XFCE on Slackware was... Weird stuff. O.o (I'm not
> really implying anything, just noticing something I didn't expect.)
Nice. :)
Maybe it's time to give KDE4 another try. Its' graphics performance
seems be to have been improved with Release 4.2 anyway (at least I've
been told), and my last test was with an early 4.0 release. My wifes'
laptop is on Linux for some time now, and I already noticed that
nspluginwrapper + flash plugin are stable even after updates.
Matthew Fleming
> On Tue, 2011-03-29 at 11:43 -0500, Paul Schmehl wrote:
>> Desktop support is lacking when compared to the other major OSes
>> (Windows, Mac and Linux).
>
> Here too. How is "desktop support" on FreeBSD lacking?
I realize a desktop means many things to many people, but the biggest
thing holding me back from using FreeBSD on a desktop is flash
support. I spent a little time trying to follow online instructions
and I didn't get anything working.
I use my Mac 90% of the time as just a web browser. I use my PC 90%
of the time just to play Civ 5. I use Linux at work because I can use
all the SCM tools I want (that FreeBSD also has) but also I can listen
to pandora and watch youtube videos while I work.
Cheers,
matthew
Michal Varga
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Michal Varga <varga....@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Here too. How is "desktop support" on FreeBSD lacking?
>
> I realize a desktop means many things to many people, but the biggest
> thing holding me back from using FreeBSD on a desktop is flash
> support. I spent a little time trying to follow online instructions
> and I didn't get anything working.
Lack of Flash support - a proprietary closed exploit-ridden hellhole -
sorry, I mean - "application" - that's in no way tied to FreeBSD and
controlled by a legendarily uncompetent company that blantantly refuses
to release a FreeBSD version of this very fine and awesome rootkit (a
good decision that one can only support, so really, what's the issue) is
hardly something that could even remotely be FreeBSD's fault. I mean,
this is what we're talking about:
http://secunia.com/advisories/search/?search=adobe+flash
But even in a completely hypothetical scenario where Flash wouldn't be
the world's most famous never-ending exploit carnival in the entire
existence of the universe, how that makes FreeBSD less desktop friendly
or less desktop capable? Adobe decided to not release their software on
FreeBSD (again, thank you Adobe, that's a thousand less attack vectors
daily to worry about), but there is no issue with FreeBSD with regard to
that, isn't it? This isn't the case that "FreeBSD broke the Flash" (ok,
this isn't funny anymore), there was never any FreeBSD Flash in the
first place. So no FreeBSD issue exists, or at least I can't see it, or
maybe I simply don't get something here.
There is also no Microsoft Windows Management Console for FreeBSD, does
it make FreeBSD lacking, insufficient, or broken in some specific server
area?
m.
--
Michal Varga,
Stonehenge (Gmail account)
Andriy Gapon
>>> Desktop support is lacking when compared to the other major OSes
>>> (Windows, Mac and Linux).
>>
>
> I realize a desktop means many things to many people, but the biggest
> thing holding me back from using FreeBSD on a desktop is flash
> support. I spent a little time trying to follow online instructions
> and I didn't get anything working.
Strange. I followed some instructions that I googled up and it was like "install
these two ports and run that command" and everything worked. And still does :)
(I think that it was www/linux-f10-flashplugin10, www/nspluginwrapper and running
nspluginwrapper -v -i /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
as a user for which I enabled the plugin).
--
Andriy Gapon
Alex Goncharov
| There is also no Microsoft Windows Management Console for FreeBSD, does
| it make FreeBSD lacking, insufficient, or broken in some specific server
| area?
It's time to switch this char elsewhere, to -help, perhaps, no?
-- Alex -- alex-go...@comcast.net --
Christian Walther
> Hi,
>
[Port building, mplayer/mencoder example w/o options]
Packages are build with the default ports options. These turn out to
be suitable for me, so I guess they are suitable for others, as well.
I never said that building from source is pointless -- at least this
was not my intention.
> Now do it the other way, learn what all the respective techs (and so
> dependencies) mean and do, pull in whatever stuff you need to get your
> work (or entertainment time or whatever else) done, fine tune your
> compiler whistles (multimedia processing benefits heavily from extended
> instruction sets, I obviously don't need to stress that), and poof, you
> end up with a single most complete multimedia playback AND transcoding
> package that covers most people's 99% needs [citation needed].
Certainly. This is a question of the use case. I haven't seen a single
case where mplayer was unable to playback a file.
[FreeBSD user complaining about missing mplayer capabilities]
IMO this is about education. Firstly I expect FreeBSD users to read
the documentation, in this case "Packages and ports", which at least
should give them a hint that packages are not everything in existence.
Secondly there are mailing lists and forums where one can ask in case
something doesn't work as expected. Changing an OS or distro just
because something doesn't work IMO doesn't count as problem solving
strategy. ;)
And I think that the problem with mplayer exists on Linux as well, due
to licensing and legal issues.
> Now you probably see where I'm getting at with all the fine-tuning mumbo
> and configurations and customizations. Yes, FreeBSD takes time, but it
> gives you the possibility and opportunity to do it. You don't need to -
> there are prebuilt generic packages that do generic stuff (somehow),
> there are systems like PC-BSD that already come "complete" and well - do
> stuff - somehow, but FreeBSD *lets* you do much more, the moment you
> realize that you need to.
Exactly.
> To put it as a hyperbole - if you just want generic stock off-the-shelf
> crap, yes, FreeBSD has that (too). Some, or *most* of it might even
> work. Some might be bloated, some might be insufficiently
> 'stock-configured' so instead of one, you will end up with system
> stuffed with multiple applications of the same kind, only because "some
> of them sometimes work with something and some with the rest". But for
> people that want the control and need the control and need to get under
> the hood and tune it for the best possible outcome, FreeBSD offers
> everything all the way down like no other OS does.
Yes, it's about freedom, really. :)
And since the OP asked of how to proceed I think it's fair to mention packages.
I entirely disregarded pre built packages time, because I thought it
best to compile everything myself. When I state that my T30 takes two
days to build all ports I need and want is not a claim, I've seen it
several times. ;)
We have some great tools to deal with updates, but even with those and
"make config-recursive" I occasionally checked the machine in the
morning and saw a dialog window asking for a ports configuration. This
is not a real problem but costs precious hour. And the machine
consumes energy. Download packages enables me to run a shutdown when I
go to bed.
>> Compiling from source can be done on fast, modern systems, e.g. amd64.
>> My primary "workstation" is a rusty Thinkpad T30. Building all ports
>> from scratch takes two days, and we're not talking about any IDE.
>
> You can always build your "tuned" ports infrastructure someplace else
> and deploy everything on T30 via packages after (see what I did here?).
Yes, I know. And I decided not do so -- which is my choice.
>> Additionally, using compiler optimization doesn't seem to be that
>> recommended anymore, since it can break code, thus leading to nasty
>> results.
>
> I wouldn't agree there. The basic O2 is perfectly safe for ages now (O3
> not so, *but* depends on your time and resources to put into testing and
> possible troublesolving, and even then you might still turn out to be a
> winner in most cases in the end). Processor specific optimizations are a
> must too, otherwise you don't even need the fancy new one with the
> latest SSSSSE9-THIS-TIME-IN-STEREO, when your plan is to keep using just
> the raw i386 out of it, that's like buying a latest state-of-the-art
> sportbike and for the rest of the life keep dragging it tied behind a
> Pinto.
Well, you gain much by the speed of the CPU alone. ;)
And I reckon that most tools that I use really don't care if they're
build for i386 or i686. It does make sense for video encoding,
decoding of course, and number crunching (raytracing for example).
[Optimization and debuging]
> Several developers are simply lazy and nobody pays them to debug someone
> elses issues. Keeping it simple and unified saves anyone's time, but
> mostly theirs. I personally support this approach and everyone sane
> should.
It's not only that, wrong compiler options can really break valid
code. We're not talking about -O2 here, but -O3 on gcc 4.x is a
candidate here. And then there are really harmful ones, such as
-funroll-loops and -fforce-mem. Thing is, there are Gentoo folks who
have those set system wide.
A nice read IRT to optimization is
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gcc-optimization.xml
They basically recommend to stick to -march, -O, and -pipe
Yes, I once had a Gentoo system running, which is why I became
conservative when it comes to optimization. ;)
[Snipped the NVidia part -- got it :)]
Adam Vande More
> Strange. I followed some instructions that I googled up and it was like
> "install
> these two ports and run that command" and everything worked. And still
> does :)
>
> (I think that it was www/linux-f10-flashplugin10, www/nspluginwrapper and
> running
> nspluginwrapper -v -i
> /usr/local/lib/npapi/linux-f10-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
> as a user for which I enabled the plugin).
>
Ditto, flash has usable for years via the linux plugin. It's not perfect
and those stalls are really annoying, but then again flash doesn't work
perfectly on my Windows XP VM either.
I've used FreeBSD as desktop and server install for years, and it's been
good. I do everything I'd do on a commercial OS.
My policy is if a friend or family calls me for support, the third time I
have to go to their place and find malware I move them to FreeBSD. I don't
have to travel so much anymore but I still get the occasional thing like
/tmp being full. Now it's easy though because ssh still works quite well
over a slow DSL link.
Whatever your desktop system runs, there is a certain overhead to learn and
maintain it. Maybe FreeBSD is a little higher than others, but the for me
the net gain is worth it. I don't have the brain capacity to learn the ins
and outs of every Linux distro that exists, and all the major ones I'm
familiar with have flaws I'd rather not adopt.
To come back to the original thread question:
You were basically scolded a week or two ago because you continued to ask
rudimentary questions that are covered by the handbook. You disregarded
that advice, but I'll try again. RTFM. If you would bother to actually
read stuff before asking questions, many of those questions would not
exist. IMO, FreeBSD documentation is one of it's biggest advantages. If
you're not going to utilize it what is the point in adopting the OS?
I think a entry on people who are obsessed with collecting OS's warrants an
entry in the DSM IV.
--
Adam Vande More
Chip Camden
> on 29/03/2011 19:43 Paul Schmehl said the following:
> > compared to the other major OSes (Windows, Mac and Linux). You can make it work,
> > if you want to, but that's not what its primary function is.
>
> FreeBSD is whatever its users and developers make it to be.
> FreeBSD is positioned as a general purpose OS and different people use it in very
> different ways. From embedded through servers to desktops. Yes, really.
>
> You can share your experience about FreeBSD as a desktop, I can share mine (which
> is quite different from yours), those would be interesting (and perhaps useful)
> But, please, let's refrain from labeling FreeBSD and cornering it into some niche.
>
Hear, hear! I use it for my desktop, and I'm quite happy with it.
--
.o. | Sterling (Chip) Camden | http://camdensoftware.com
..o | ster...@camdensoftware.com | http://chipsquips.com
ooo | 2048R/D6DBAF91 | http://chipstips.com
Paul Schmehl
wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-03-29 at 11:43 -0500, Paul Schmehl wrote:
>
>> FreeBSD is first and foremost a server OS.
>
> Could you support your claim with some examples, please?
>
Seriously? Visit Netcraft.
>
>> Desktop support is lacking when compared to the other major OSes
>> (Windows, Mac and Linux).
>
> Here too. How is "desktop support" on FreeBSD lacking?
>
>
Just getting Xorg working correctly can be a challenge. Installing a DM
adds another layer of complexity that some find daunting.
Flash, Java, Youtube - all take extra work and in some cases (amd64) don't
work very well at all. Check the questions archives for innumerable
examples.
For a new user, printing can be difficult to get working correctly. So can
figuring out how to use a CD.
The graphics are not up to par with Windows, much less Mac OS.
I have used and continue to use numerous OSes; Windows (every OS since
Workgroups 3.0), Mac (every OS since 6.x), Ubuntu, RedHat, Slackware,
Gentoo, CentOS, OpenBSD, AIX, Solaris and FreeBSD (just to name a few), and
I can assure you that FreeBSD's desktop system is not on the same par with
the others with the exception of OpenBSD, AIX and Solaris.
I ran FreeBSD as a desktop system on my primary computer for about three
years and through several in-place upgrades (from 6.2 to 8.0) without ever
formatting and reinstalling. I've used Gnome, KDE and xfce and played
around with wm during a minimalist phase.
>> You can make it
>> work, if you want to, but that's not what its primary function is.
>
> Where can I find some detailed information about what is FreeBSD's
> "primary funtion" and what does that even mean in the first place?
>
Don't you think you're being a little silly here? I've used FreeBSD as a
server OS for over ten years and it is hands down the best OS for that
function that I have ever used. But as a desktop, it is less than stellar.
I am *not* being critical of the folks who make FreeBSD what it is, but
it's obvious to anyone who uses it that the desktop functionality is not
the primary focus.
I *love* FreeBSD. I'm a port maintainer, so that should show you the level
of commitment that I have to the OS. But a desktop OS, it ain't. It can
be made one by a skilled user, but even I got tired of having to constantly
tweak it. Upgrade Xorg and all of a sudden crap stops working again.
(Remember hal? Then hal goes away....) Upgrade KDE and it breaks
functionality. Then you troubleshoot, figure out what went wrong and get
it working again.
I now use a Mac and run FreeBSD in VMWare Fusion. Much less hassle.
>
>> If you want a user friendly desktop OS, FreeBSD is probably not your
>> best choice.
>
> Why? How is KDE, Gnome, XFCE or some potential other desktop environment
> different from the literally exactly same one running on, say, Linux?
>
If you are really serious, install Ubuntu. Then tell me you can get the
same results from the FreeBSD installer without tweaking. Launch a browser
and run flash. Try to get Java working on all web pages. Go to Youtube
and see if you can watch a video. Ubuntu does it out of the box. FreeBSD
only does it after you tweak and tweak and tweak and google and google and
google.
--
Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell
_______________________________________________
Paul Schmehl
wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-03-29 at 10:51 -0700, Matthew Fleming wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Michal Varga <varga....@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Here too. How is "desktop support" on FreeBSD lacking?
>>
>> I realize a desktop means many things to many people, but the biggest
>> thing holding me back from using FreeBSD on a desktop is flash
>> support. I spent a little time trying to follow online instructions
>> and I didn't get anything working.
>
> Lack of Flash support - a proprietary closed exploit-ridden hellhole -
> sorry, I mean - "application" - that's in no way tied to FreeBSD and
> controlled by a legendarily uncompetent company that blantantly refuses
> to release a FreeBSD version of this very fine and awesome rootkit (a
> good decision that one can only support, so really, what's the issue) is
> hardly something that could even remotely be FreeBSD's fault. I mean,
> this is what we're talking about:
>
Michal, calm down. No one is blaming FreeBSD for any of this. But
seriously, man, install FreeBSD - no ports - then run a desktop system for
me. You can't.
That's how silly your argument is. You can't do it, because FreeBSD does
not have a system-installed desktop. Even Xorg is a port.
No way is the crap that other people (like Adobe) put out the fault of
FreeBSD, but by the same token, you can hardly claim FreeBSD is good
desktop system when it doesn't even have a display system without the use
of ports.
Flash may be riddled with holes (it clearly is) but those are Windows
holes. If I'm running flash on FreeBSD (if I can even get it working), I
could care less about Windows exploits. It may come as a shock to you (it
certainly seems to) but there are actually legitimate reasons for needing a
functional flash installation.
Nothing can be all things to all people. FreeBSD is a fantastic server OS.
As a desktop OS, not so much.
Since this is rapidly descending into bizarro world, I'll let you have the
last word. You clearly are eager to defend FreeBSD to the hilt, no matter
how ridiculous your argument becomes.
Stephen Montgomery-Smith
> On Tue, 2011-03-29 at 10:51 -0700, Matthew Fleming wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Michal Varga<varga....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Here too. How is "desktop support" on FreeBSD lacking?
>>>
>> I realize a desktop means many things to many people, but the biggest
>> thing holding me back from using FreeBSD on a desktop is flash
>> support. I spent a little time trying to follow online instructions
>> and I didn't get anything working.
>>
> Lack of Flash support - a proprietary closed exploit-ridden hellhole -
> sorry, I mean - "application" - that's in no way tied to FreeBSD and
> controlled by a legendarily uncompetent company that blantantly refuses
> to release a FreeBSD version of this very fine and awesome rootkit (a
> good decision that one can only support, so really, what's the issue) is
> hardly something that could even remotely be FreeBSD's fault. I mean,
> this is what we're talking about:
>
>
> But even in a completely hypothetical scenario where Flash wouldn't be
> the world's most famous never-ending exploit carnival in the entire
> existence of the universe, how that makes FreeBSD less desktop friendly
> or less desktop capable? Adobe decided to not release their software on
> FreeBSD (again, thank you Adobe, that's a thousand less attack vectors
> daily to worry about), but there is no issue with FreeBSD with regard to
> that, isn't it? This isn't the case that "FreeBSD broke the Flash" (ok,
> this isn't funny anymore), there was never any FreeBSD Flash in the
> first place. So no FreeBSD issue exists, or at least I can't see it, or
> maybe I simply don't get something here.
>
> it make FreeBSD lacking, insufficient, or broken in some specific server
> area?
>
1. Lack of good flash support is most definitely not FreeBSD's fault.
But if you want easy to use flash support, you don't care who's fault it
is, you just care where you can get it.
2. I have found i386 flash support works well on FreeBSD. But on the
amd64, my experience was that it was very flaky. (But I do agree that
Windows is also flaky.)
3. Whether or not the use wants the ability to install a proprietary
closed exploit-ridden hellhole depends upon what they want. If they
want to go to movie web sites and view the latest trailers complete with
all the flashy add ons, then FreeBSD is not the way to go. Of course,
if your idea of a good desktop experience is as a software development
environment, or to write math papers in latex, or to check email with
little to no risk of acquiring the latest virus, FreeBSD wins out hands
down.
Stephen
Adam Vande More
> Go to Youtube and see if you can watch a video. Ubuntu does it out of the
> box. FreeBSD only does it after you tweak and tweak and tweak and google
> and google and google.
Or just follow the instructions. If people really find that difficult I'm
not sure any OS is going to be the answer long term. If you do enough
computer use you'll have to follow instructions at some point.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-browsers.html
Java is a different matter. Handbook should be updated to use the iced tea
plugin since the other java plugin doesn't work on new FF plus it's other
deficiencies.
Comparing Ubuntu and FreeBSD is a false choice and if you want a rough
equivalent of ubuntu, use PCBSD. I don't agree with what you say is so
hard, but there are options to take most of that overhead away.
--
Adam Vande More
Doug Barton
> Java is a different matter. Handbook should be updated to use the iced tea
> plugin since the other java plugin doesn't work on new FF plus it's other
> deficiencies.
It's been update for some time now. :)
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/desktop-browsers.html
--
Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much.
-- OK Go
Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS.
Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/
Chip Camden
> 3. Whether or not the use wants the ability to install a proprietary
> closed exploit-ridden hellhole depends upon what they want. If they
> want to go to movie web sites and view the latest trailers complete with
> all the flashy add ons, then FreeBSD is not the way to go. Of course,
> if your idea of a good desktop experience is as a software development
> environment, or to write math papers in latex, or to check email with
> little to no risk of acquiring the latest virus, FreeBSD wins out hands
> down.
>
about Flash, myself. A secure, fast, and open development box is what I
need.
Doug Barton
> That's how silly your argument is. You can't do it, because FreeBSD
> does not have a system-installed desktop. Even Xorg is a port.
It is in linux too, it's just that the various distros who focus on the
desktop have bundled it into the default installation so when you
install $distro you get a complete desktop environment from the
beginning. If you look under the hood, you can see the individual
packages that make up the "desktop."
For those arguing that FreeBSD is a great desktop OS, I would encourage
you to spend some time using some of the linux versions mentioned in
this thread. Or if you want to be really blown away just start with
Ubuntu. For some of you, the first reaction will be "this is not what
I'm used to!" but I encourage you to try and get past that, and look at
things from the "average user's" point of view. Most computer users
don't want to spend time fiddling with their OS, the just want to do
their thing (web, mail, documents and spreadsheets being the vast
majority of "things" they want to do). For those purposes a distro like
Ubuntu completely blows FreeBSD out of the water in terms of coming out
of the box in a fully functional state, and in terms of ease of use for
maintenance, updates, etc. there is no comparison.
All that said, I personally have been using a FreeBSD desktop in a
multi-boot environment for over 15 years, the last 10 have been
primarily on -current. But I *like* to fiddle with stuff, fix/report
bugs, etc. If you want to learn the OS, it's a great way to go. But
that's why I asked Jason what his goals were in my first message. If
your goal is simply to have a desktop environment that's easy to use,
FreeBSD is not it. We need to be honest with ourselves about that if
we're ever going to make progress on it.
Doug
PS, it would be really helpful if people could tone down the language a
bit, and the vitriol a lot. Thanks.
Paul Schmehl
<amvan...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:11 PM, Paul Schmehl <pschmeh...@tx.rr.com>
> wrote:
>
> Go to Youtube and see if you can watch a video. Ubuntu does it out of
> the box. FreeBSD only does it after you tweak and tweak and tweak and
> google and google and google.
>
>
> Or just follow the instructions. If people really find that difficult
> I'm not sure any OS is going to be the answer long term. If you do
> enough computer use you'll have to follow instructions at some point.
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-browser
> s.html
>
Imagine that. And yet you can find numerous posts in questions from people
who struggle with it. Must be stupid people then, huh?
> Java is a different matter. Handbook should be updated to use the iced
> tea plugin since the other java plugin doesn't work on new FF plus it's
> other deficiencies.
>
At least you're willing to admit there have been some deficiencies....
> Comparing Ubuntu and FreeBSD is a false choice and if you want a rough
> equivalent of ubuntu, use PCBSD. I don't agree with what you say is so
> hard, but there are options to take most of that overhead away.
Can we at least agree that the OP found it hard? Could we further agree
that he's not the first one to encounter problems?
Sure FreeBSD isn't hard for those of us who have used it for years, but
seriously, to expect a newbie to just roll the OS out, get a desktop up and
running, install a functional flash and java without encountering any
difficult issues is a bit unrealistic, don't you think?
As I stated in another reply, I just got tired of the hassle of constantly
having to fix things that were working fine before I ran portupgrade. And
I gave up on flash. It simply did not work. I just installed VirtualBox
and ran Windows 7 in it.
I finally asked myself why I was wasting my valuable time trying to get and
maintain functionality that "just worked" on the Mac. The answer was, stop
wasting your time.
Again, this is *not* a knock on FreeBSD, but there is a world of difference
between installing an OS that runs a window display system (like Xorg) and
a DM (like KDE) and flash and java and all the things that I am forced to
use for my work out of the box and installing all those ports and
maintaining them and fixing the problems that inevitably occur.
That's why my desktop OS is now a Mac. Because when I have to attend a
meeting using Adobe Connect (which I will doing next week), I can't do that
in a FreeBSD desktop without a *lot* of work and tweaking, if at all. When
I need to do a remote session with a vendor to fix yet-another-problem on a
stupid Windows server, I need Java to work flawlessly with Go To My PC. It
may or may not do that on FreeBSD. No, it's not FreeBSD's "fault", but who
really gives a damn when it needs to work?
And, after all, isn't that the OP's complaint?
--
Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell
_______________________________________________
Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
> --On March 29, 2011 1:32:23 AM -0400 Jason Hsu <jhsu8...@jasonhsu.com>
> wrote:
>
>
...
>
>> 4. What are the Linux Mint and Puppy Linux of the BSD universe? I
>> consider these two distros to set the standard in the Linux universe,
>> because they're so user-friendly. These are the distros I've set out to
>> compete against in developing Swift Linux.
>>
>
> FreeBSD is first and foremost a server OS. Desktop support is lacking when
> compared to the other major OSes (Windows, Mac and Linux). You can make it
> work, if you want to, but that's not what its primary function is.
>
> If you want a user friendly desktop OS, FreeBSD is probably not your best
> choice.
>
> --
> Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst
> As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
> are my own and not those of my employer.
>
Business of an operating system is to manage the resources of the computer
hardware and execute suitably written user programs whatever the subjects of
those programs are .
Therefore distinguishing between ¨Server Operating System¨ and ¨Desktop
Operating System¨ is an artificial discrimination which these may be
attributed to configuration parameters .
If a so-called ¨operating system¨ lacks any capability to manage either of
these parts ( hardware and software ) , it is my opinion that ¨operating
system¨ is not a proper name for it .
When we consider the FreeBSD from point of view of operating systems , it is
a wonderful operating system .
Then what is the trouble which is not widely adopted for desktop usage and
actually by super computers ?
In my opinion , it is the default installation configuration .
The attitude for default configuration seems to make it restrictive against
easy use as much as possible .
The wrong point is ( that design decision ) that make it unusable by the
inexperienced or first time users .
During its design of user interface the above fact is not taken into
consideration very much ( with respect to my opinion ) .
Please do NOT take my ideas against the FreeBSD developers . These ideas are
expressed just to illuminate difficulties and discuss possible remedies .
When a point is difficult for a computer engineer with more than forty years
of computing experience , please think its level of difficulty .
During install , it is possible to ask whether that computer will be used by
multiple users or a single user which this fact is asked explicitly BUT not
utilized sufficiently :
Questions and answers by the installer :
Will be NSF server ? NO .
Will be NSF client ? NO .
Will be FTP server ? NO .
Will be GATEWAY ? NO .
etc.
All the information about whether the computer will be used as a server or a
desktop computer is given by the above answers . Therefore , it is VERY EASY
to select installed configuration files with respect to the answers to the
above questions :
For the server : Very restrictive settings , because server administrators
need high level of security ,
For the single user : Very permissive settings for the user land , because
single users need easy usage ,
but very restrictive settings for the root
related parts to prevent malicious software
invasion .
The point is very clear :
The computer is belong to me :
I can crash it ,
I can destroy it ,
I can throw it to fire , and
the worst case , I can insert another operating system installer and
completely erase FreeBSD on it ,
BUT I can NOT auto mount a USB stick ( which is possible to do it since
1998 in Windows ) ,
I can NOT auto mount a DVD/CD ( which is possible , perhaps it
started with first Windows in 1995 ) ,
although such operations are also possible in FreeBSD always .
Then , it is not possible to understand why FreeBSD is isolating itself from
society .
To see the amount of adoption , please consider the following web site
( in my opinion even it is not necessary to look elsewhere for level of
adoption because from Central Limit Theorem of Statistics , we can conclude
that a sample size of 500 is a complete representative of whole universe
) :
At the right top of its page , there is a Statistics part .
>From its ( Statistics Type ) part select ( Operating System Family ) and
click Generate :
http://www.top500.org/stats/list/36/osf<http://www.top500.org/stats/list/36/osfam>
For 11/2011 among top 500 super computers :
Linux 459
Windows 5
Unix 19
BSD based 1 : OpenSolaris
Mixed 16 .
>From its ( Statistics Type ) part select ( Processor Family ) and click
Generate :
http://www.top500.org/stats/list/36/procfam
Power 40
Nec 1
Sparc 1
Intel IA-64 5 : Itanium
Intel EMT64T 392 : amd64 in FreeBSD
AMD x86_64 57 : amd64 in FreeBSD
Intel Core 1 : i386 or amd64 in FreeBSD
Others 2
I am NOT against Linux or any other operating system , but my concern is
when a very high technology is available in FreeBSD , why it is NOT used
extensively which it is sure that it is useful for society .
Then , what may be the solutions :
Instead of pursuing a solid rock Handbook , please include a facility on
each page to get opinions , questions of users about information given in
that page , and link these responses to TODO pages , to track problems .
These opinions or questions will be more informal with respect to problem
reports .
When the SVN is inspected , in some directories there are man pages along
with the corresponding programs .
My impression is that each program of the operating system does not have
such pairs . For the missing pairs , move man pages into the respective
directories and always update man pages when the respective programs are
updated to keep man pages as synchronized .
Some man pages are really very cryptic which is not possible to understand
them . In the ( man page ) display pages of the FreeBSD web site , allow
user opinions and questions to be entered and link these to man page TODO
lists .
In the same way , distribute all of the respective Handbook pages into
program directories , and update them with the programs along with man pages
. Some Handbook pages may be directly generated form man pages by combining
the Handbook page and the man page . This will reduce maintenance
requirements .
The quality of the Handbook is very high ( and very good ) . This makes it
difficult to maintain .
Allow simple tutorial pages to be linked and included into Handbook to
supply application case studies , etc.
At present , these pages are scattered all over the internet and many of
them are related to older versions which they are useful for users of these
older versions , but new versions do not have respective tutorials . A new
user will obviously start from the latest release without having
sufficiently available tutorials .
The Handbook is NOT a sufficiently detailed tutorial book which its purpose
is NOT to be such a detailed tutorial book . It is necessary to enrich it by
supplying tutorial page links to its pages which these pages should be
stored into FreeBSD servers to protect them from frequent disappearing or
modification cases of web sites .
Allow people to submit plain text files for possible inclusion into Handbook
to be used by other ( developers or committers ) to utilize as starting
parts as to be formatted . Every possible contributor may not know SGML
sufficiently well .
During installation distinguish between server related settings and single
user related settings , and select installed configuration files with
respect to this structure .
It is very obvious that any solution attempt requires human time and
monetary allocations .
There is a problem : egg from chicken ,
chicken from egg .
A few months ago , www.wikipedia.org collected more than 15 million dollars
by a contribution help campaign with participants reaching to approximately
2 million ( if I remember correctly ) persons with average contribution
level around 10 dollars . Last year , their need was around 7 million
dollars .
If it is possible , such campaigns may be arranged yearly by the FreeBSD
Foundation to cover development costs . I believe in that FreeBSD is used
mainly in servers and owners of these servers will participate such
campaigns because outcome will be directly usable by them . The single user
persons need a very easily usable highly secure operating systems ,
therefore they also wish to support the FreeBSD development because their
contributions will return to themselves as more high quality operating
system .
Thank you very much with my best wishes for FreeBSD developers and its users
( with the rest of humanity ) .
Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
Adam Vande More
> Or just follow the instructions. If people really find that difficult
>> I'm not sure any OS is going to be the answer long term. If you do
>> enough computer use you'll have to follow instructions at some point.
>>
>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-browser
>> s.html
>>
>> Imagine that. And yet you can find numerous posts in questions from
> people who struggle with it. Must be stupid people then, huh?
I'll let you answer that.
>
> Java is a different matter. Handbook should be updated to use the iced
>> tea plugin since the other java plugin doesn't work on new FF plus it's
>> other deficiencies.
>>
>>
> At least you're willing to admit there have been some deficiencies....
And yet I was already proven wrong on that point.
> Comparing Ubuntu and FreeBSD is a false choice and if you want a rough
> equivalent of ubuntu, use PCBSD. I don't agree with what you say is so
> hard, but there are options to take most of that overhead away.
>
Can we at least agree that the OP found it hard? Could we further agree
> that he's not the first one to encounter problems?
>
What's so hard about PCBSD?
>
> Sure FreeBSD isn't hard for those of us who have used it for years, but
> seriously, to expect a newbie to just roll the OS out, get a desktop up and
> running, install a functional flash and java without encountering any
> difficult issues is a bit unrealistic, don't you think?
>
Depends on what you mean by newbie. Someone who's an experienced *nix
person it shouldn't be that hard at all. Coming from a Windows background
or someone that thinks gnome is ubuntu yeah it probably a real shock to the
system. However the fact that they are here means they are willing to
learn. If you aren't, it's not the thing for you.
That's why my desktop OS is now a Mac. Because when I have to attend a
> meeting using Adobe Connect (which I will doing next week), I can't do that
> in a FreeBSD desktop without a *lot* of work and tweaking, if at all. When
> I need to do a remote session with a vendor to fix yet-another-problem on a
> stupid Windows server, I need Java to work flawlessly with Go To My PC. It
> may or may not do that on FreeBSD. No, it's not FreeBSD's "fault", but who
> really gives a damn when it needs to work.
All those are your problems, not FreeBSD ones because I can assure they
work. For example, promox uses a web java applet to control it's VNC
connections. I use it without issue all the time. Not including compile
time, it took like 6 minutes to install and test.
And in response to Doug: Once again, comparing Ubuntu to FreeBSD is a false
choice. Use Debian <==> FreeBSD, Ubuntu <==> PCBSD and you'll see the
overhead of running such a system swings the other way. Getting a current
version of KDE running properly on Debian is no small feat, whereas
typically on FreeBSD it's just a compile away.
--
Adam Vande More
Paul Schmehl
<amvan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:57 PM, Paul Schmehl
> <pschmeh...@tx.rr.com>wrote:
>
>> Or just follow the instructions. If people really find that difficult
>>> I'm not sure any OS is going to be the answer long term. If you do
>>> enough computer use you'll have to follow instructions at some point.
>>>
>>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-brows
>>> er s.html
>>>
>>> Imagine that. And yet you can find numerous posts in questions from
>> people who struggle with it. Must be stupid people then, huh?
>
>
> I'll let you answer that.
>
Your response, more than any other single thing written, perfectly
encapsulates what is "wrong" with the FreeBSD community.
Can't make it work? Gee, you must be dumb. It's working for me.
In response to the rest, I will simply recommend that you read Mehmet Erol
Sanliturk's eloquent explanation. If you don't get what the problem is
then, you're not going to, and Mehmet said it much better than I.
--
Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell
_______________________________________________
Doug Barton
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 2:57 PM, Paul Schmehl<pschmeh...@tx.rr.com>wrote:
>
>> Or just follow the instructions. If people really find that difficult
>>> I'm not sure any OS is going to be the answer long term. If you do
>>> enough computer use you'll have to follow instructions at some point.
>>>
>>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop-browser
>>> s.html
>>>
>>> Imagine that. And yet you can find numerous posts in questions from
>> people who struggle with it. Must be stupid people then, huh?
Paul, this is a good example of the kind of vitriol that isn't really
helpful. Please tone it down.
To address the content of your concern, I've been using flash on FreeBSD
for a long time. It's gone through phases where it's been easier,
harder, more and less successful. At the moment it's working pretty
well, but I agree with you that it's not an ideal situation.
However regarding the documentation, the URL that was posted has been
stable for a long time ("years," can't tell you exactly how many).
However, like a lot of other topics there is stale documentation outside
of FreeBSD, and other generally bad advice that gets passed around from
user to user. That's a difficult problem for us to address directly.
>> Comparing Ubuntu and FreeBSD is a false choice
Yes, that's sort of my point. :) Ubuntu is literally in a class by
itself in terms of both the OOB and long-term use experiences. So if all
you want is a Unix'y desktop OS (and you can't afford/don't want a mac),
use it, and be happy. If you have other goals (such as learning Unix
internals generally, or a specific OS) then you have other areas you can
focus on, such as FreeBSD.
Doug
--
Nothin' ever doesn't change, but nothin' changes much.
-- OK Go
Breadth of IT experience, and depth of knowledge in the DNS.
Yours for the right price. :) http://SupersetSolutions.com/
_______________________________________________
Marko Lerota
>> Are there any good tutorials for using BSD on the desktop?
>
> Simple answer, if your only goal is to have a Unix-like desktop,
> you're better off sticking with Linux. FreeBSD is not really focused
> on desktop use, whereas a lot of the Linux distributions are, and if
> you're happy with the ones you are using there is no good reason to
> switch.
I agree with that. I had problems with Flash on AMD64 so sometimes
I couldn't watch Youtube videos :-). And that's not good at all :-).
I'm now using Linux as a desktop, and I'm not completely satisfied
with it. But all the servers are on FreeBSD, and I'm completely
satisfied with this.
--
Marko Lerota
Sent from my Gnus Mailer
Pete French
Am impressed - I didnt realise it was possible at all under amd64! I
ended up using 'gnash' which doesnt really do the job to be honest,
but it better than nothing. These days I find the best solution is
keeping a copy of Windows inside VirtualBox for those moments
when I need stuff that freeBSD can't do (primarily talking to HP iLo's
these days, since I can't make Java work in Firefox)
As a desktop to get work done I can't fault BSD - but would I use
it at home for general browsing ? No, too many things don't work
properly. OSX all the way there I'm afraid...
-pete.
Marko Lerota
> Am impressed - I didnt realise it was possible at all under amd64! I
> ended up using 'gnash' which doesnt really do the job to be honest,
> but it better than nothing. These days I find the best solution is
> keeping a copy of Windows inside VirtualBox for those moments
> when I need stuff that freeBSD can't do (primarily talking to HP iLo's
> these days, since I can't make Java work in Firefox)
Now you reminded me how pissed I was as a sysadmin :-). I had to deal
with IBM RSA's and Dell DRAC's. They all use Java. Use to hate everything
that came with Java :-).
--
Marko Lerota
Sent from my Gnus Mailer
Marian Hettwer
wrote:
> Pete French <petef...@ingresso.co.uk> writes:
>
>> Am impressed - I didnt realise it was possible at all under amd64! I
>> ended up using 'gnash' which doesnt really do the job to be honest,
>> but it better than nothing. These days I find the best solution is
>> keeping a copy of Windows inside VirtualBox for those moments
>> when I need stuff that freeBSD can't do (primarily talking to HP iLo's
>> these days, since I can't make Java work in Firefox)
>
> Now you reminded me how pissed I was as a sysadmin :-). I had to deal
> with IBM RSA's and Dell DRAC's. They all use Java. Use to hate everything
> that came with Java :-).
hehe. yeah, I had the very same impression, back in the days.
It's totally Off Topic, but with HP iLO go and use the serial console
via ssh.
Way better than the bloody java applet ;)
./Marian
José Miguel Martínez Carrasco
I read interesting comments about using FreeBSD as your main desktop. Here
are my experience.
I use FreeBSD as my main working environment. I'm a java developer using
openjdk6 with no issues.
Regarding flash, I don't use it and invest that time learning FreeBSD. I
agree with Steve Jobs :)
Finally, the greatest mistake is not reading the terrific FreeBSD handbook.
Best.
José Miguel Martínez Carrasco
---------------------------------------
http://www.jm2dev.com
http://identi.ca/jm2dev
http://twitter.com/jm2dev
Jeremy Chadwick
> > I agree with that. I had problems with Flash on AMD64 so sometimes
>
> ended up using 'gnash' which doesnt really do the job to be honest,
> but it better than nothing. These days I find the best solution is
> keeping a copy of Windows inside VirtualBox for those moments
> when I need stuff that freeBSD can't do (primarily talking to HP iLo's
> these days, since I can't make Java work in Firefox)
Funny that -- even in a server-centric environment I still test FreeBSD
changes (patches, major changes to ports, etc.) on my workstation PC
(Windows XP) running FreeBSD under VMware Workstation. I have a home
FreeBSD box for stuff, but depending on what I'm testing I can't risk
data loss or "filesystem craziness" on it. Instead, I'll use VMware.
And in some cases I'll even throw a 3rd disk into my Windows XP box for
VMware to use as a direct/dedicated device, just so I can poke at SATA
stuff and not risk hurting anything.
Furthermore, for doing certain administrative tasks on Windows, I'll
often run Windows XP under VMware too. A good example is something I'm
working on now: trying to figure out/understand how to build a WinPE
bootable ISO so I can deal with Windows-oriented problems at home.
Microsoft, for reasons unknown to me, doesn't make this process even
remotely easy. I spent my entire Monday trying to get things like
BartPE to work (failed miserably on a USB stick but worked fine on a
CD), yet even once I got into the thing, I found utilities like DISKPART
wouldn't work (service wasn't running). Really quite a sad state of
affairs.
Anyway, the 2nd paragraph above is unrelated to the FreeBSD side of
things, but I just thought I'd share my pain with other sysadmins out
there. It's 2011 yet we still go through all this pain and rigmarole
just to get something worthwhile. System Administrator Appreciation Day
(last Friday of July) really needs more attention. And us SAs should be
sure to appreciate other SAs too.
--
| Jeremy Chadwick j...@parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB |
Andriy Gapon
> For those arguing that FreeBSD is a great desktop OS
I have even a stronger opinion: FreeBSD is the *best* desktop for _me_.
I emphasize again - personally for _me_: for _my_ uses, for _my_ habits, for _my_
etc. (And for my family's ones too, just in case).
> I would encourage you to
> spend some time using some of the linux versions mentioned in this thread.
Been there, done that, nothing changed :)
So, instead of suggesting what's best for other person, let's just share our
experiences and let that other person try and decide.
That is:
"I found Linux to be a better desktop than FreeBSD" is fine by me.
"Use Linux as a desktop because it's better than FreeBSD [for you]" is not.
Thanks.
--
Andriy Gapon
Oliver Pinter
On 3/30/11, Marko Lerota <mle...@claresco.hr> wrote:
> Doug Barton <do...@FreeBSD.org> writes:
>
>>> Are there any good tutorials for using BSD on the desktop?
>>
>> Simple answer, if your only goal is to have a Unix-like desktop,
>> you're better off sticking with Linux. FreeBSD is not really focused
>> on desktop use, whereas a lot of the Linux distributions are, and if
>> you're happy with the ones you are using there is no good reason to
>> switch.
>
> I agree with that. I had problems with Flash on AMD64 so sometimes
> I couldn't watch Youtube videos :-). And that's not good at all :-).
> I'm now using Linux as a desktop, and I'm not completely satisfied
> with it. But all the servers are on FreeBSD, and I'm completely
> satisfied with this.
>
> --
> Marko Lerota
> Sent from my Gnus Mailer
Michal Varga
> http://hup.hu/node/94286 ;)
>
1.
$ portinstall -v www/epiphany
$ epiphany "http://www.youtube.com/html5"
$ epiphany "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1dcHoL6Y"
2.
$ portinstall -v multimedia/quvi multimedia/mplayer
$ cat ~/bin/streamvid
quvi -f best "$1" --exec "mplayer -prefer-ipv4 %u 1>&2" > /dev/null
$ streamvid "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1dcHoL6Y"
3.
$ portinstall -v multimedia/cclive
$ cclive -f best "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1dcHoL6Y"
m.
--
Michal Varga,
Stonehenge (Gmail account)
Andriy Gapon
> On Wed, 2011-03-30 at 16:26 +0200, Oliver Pinter wrote:
>> http://hup.hu/node/94286 ;)
>>
>
> 1.
> $ portinstall -v www/epiphany
> $ epiphany "http://www.youtube.com/html5"
> $ epiphany "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1dcHoL6Y"
>
>
> 2.
> $ portinstall -v multimedia/quvi multimedia/mplayer
> $ cat ~/bin/streamvid
> quvi -f best "$1" --exec "mplayer -prefer-ipv4 %u 1>&2" > /dev/null
> $ streamvid "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1dcHoL6Y"
>
>
> 3.
> $ portinstall -v multimedia/cclive
> $ cclive -f best "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1dcHoL6Y"
>
There is also multimedia/minitube
--
Andriy Gapon
Charlie Kester
>On Wed, 2011-03-30 at 16:26 +0200, Oliver Pinter wrote:
>> http://hup.hu/node/94286 ;)
>>
>
>1.
>$ portinstall -v www/epiphany
>$ epiphany "http://www.youtube.com/html5"
>$ epiphany "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1dcHoL6Y"
Firefox4 is now in ports, and also supports html5.
Michal Varga
> On Wed 30 Mar 2011 at 08:10:23 PDT Michal Varga wrote:
> >On Wed, 2011-03-30 at 16:26 +0200, Oliver Pinter wrote:
> >> http://hup.hu/node/94286 ;)
> >>
> >
> >1.
> >$ portinstall -v www/epiphany
> >$ epiphany "http://www.youtube.com/html5"
> >$ epiphany "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBH1dcHoL6Y"
>
> Firefox4 is now in ports, and also supports html5.
Only partially. Firefox supports only Google's WEBM video codec for
political reasons, completely ignoring the major one - H.264 (sure,
there is Ogg Theora too, but nobody uses that). So Firefox's usefulness
on HTML5 video is at this moment very limited.
I picked Epiphany in my example as it uses gstreamer backend for HTML5
video and thus plays everything that gstreamer has codecs for, which is
basically everything.
m.
--
Michal Varga,
Stonehenge (Gmail account)
Любомир Григоров
natively on FreeBSD. You can have the Linux flash plugin attached to it and
still run the native FreeBSD version. It also supports html5.
--
Lyubomir Grigorov (bgalakazam)
Zoran Kolic
> natively on FreeBSD. You can have the Linux flash plugin attached to it and
> still run the native FreeBSD version. It also supports html5.
I use Conkeror on both desktop and laptop and simply cannot
imagine to go back to <insert_browser>.
Just wonna stress how my nodes run no more than 10 processes
at the boot time and how that differs from whatever os I en-
countered so far. As almost all posters on this topic I do not
care for a dime if someone finds freebsd hard to configure to
suit. It is part of the game and fun itself.
Best regards
Zoran
Nikola Pavlović
> 2011/3/29 Nikola Pavlović <n...@riseup.net>:
> > As far as eye candy goes, I assure you KDE Plasma bells and whistles
> > (compositing etc.) work just fine even on a 9 year old Pentium 4 w/ 1GB
> > RAM and an NVidia GeForce 6200. I'm actually amazed how well it works,
> > it's faster than XFCE on Slackware was... Weird stuff. O.o (I'm not
> > really implying anything, just noticing something I didn't expect.)
>
> Nice. :)
> Maybe it's time to give KDE4 another try.
I haven't used KDE in years, but a few months ago I switched to FreeBSD
on my desktop and since there's nothing but KDE and Gnome on the
installation DVD, I figured it wouldn't hurt anything if I tried KDE (I
really don't like Gnome :). And whaddya know, I ended up liking it, it
feels comfortable. I'm certainly not a fan of the whole Akonadi,
Nepomuk, Telepathy, etc. hysteria, but as long as I don't need to run
and use it I'm happy to ignore it and just use features I need/want.
> Its' graphics performance
> seems be to have been improved with Release 4.2 anyway (at least I've
> been told), and my last test was with an early 4.0 release. My wifes'
> laptop is on Linux for some time now, and I already noticed that
> nspluginwrapper + flash plugin are stable even after updates.
My experience with Flash on FreeBSD has so far been just fine. Sure, it
crashes and coredumps often, but when it does I just reload the page
and/or "pkill npviewer" and everything's fine. In fact, I had more
trouble with it on Linux: after watching a lot of videos or after
leaving a page w/ a video loaded for a few hours it would stop working
and Firefox would have to be restarted (at least that's the only
solution I found).
That said, I really go out of my way to avoid Flash, and when I need it
for watching videos I tend to use tools that stream flv through Mplayer,
for example multimedia/youtube-viewer, and others have mentioned
multimedia/minitube, multimedia/cclive and multimedia/quvi. In fact I
prefer that method to playing it in a browser, but I'm the kind of
person who thinks www/surfraw is better than doing a search in a browser
directly. ;)
--
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
really care to know.