Another Step Towards BSD on the Desktop

linuxbeta writes "DesktopBSD is the latest easy to install BSD aimed squarely at the desktop. Installation screen shots. From their site: 'DesktopBSD aims at being a stable and powerful operating system for desktop users. DesktopBSD combines the stability of FreeBSD, the usability and functionality of KDE and the simplicity of specially developed software to provide a system that's easy to use and install.' DesktopBSD joins the ranks of PC-BSD and FreeSBIE."

Re:BSD v Linux

[debilo]

Please note that this is not a "distro", it's a plain FreeBSD with the addition of a graphical installer and some other nice tools.

Re:Funny installation steps

[vga_init]

It's great how the fancy graphical installation screen crashes back to an ugly terminal font in Screen10.

That's the bootloader, you nut. Even Fedora Core's bootloader uses that "ugly terminal font," just with different colors. Windows NT/2000/XP's bootloader looks like that too (and if you push the right buttons while booting your Mac, you'll get (you guessed it) a text-mode command prompt/boot loader (ie openfirmware). As with OpenFirmware, the FreeBSD bootloader can be configured silent so as not to display that menu). Sheesh. We give you KDE and you give us this hogwash about our installer. >:(

Re:BSD v Linux

[fwitness]

I'm not quite sure why you picked Myth as your example. Myth uses Qt, SQL, XML, and is written mostly in C++. I always thought of Myth as a wonderful example of what using standards can do. I can rarely find a good Linux program that doesn't require KDE or gnome, and requires some obscure library I've never heard of. Myth, on the other hand, runs on X alone, and a few sane dependencies.

As to seperating the server, Myth already has seperate backend/frontend modules. It even supports multiple backends at the same time, distributing recording and plackback in a whole m->n relationship.

I agree with all your other points, just not using Myth as an example. It ain't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an excellent example of using Linux and standards to produce something completely useful and unique.

Re:Can you say "single point of failure"?

[Anonymous Coward]

[i]The best solution is to stick with the FREE OS that has the best chance of survival (Linux), and if you hit a showstopper, help out and fix it :) Even if you're not a programmer, you can still email maintainers, fill bug reports, and offer to test out patches on your machine.[/i]

Thanks, but if I wanted to stick with a crappy operating system that has 'the best chance of survival' a company in Redmond puts something out that might be construed as an Operating System if you were drunk enough. So I'll just take the risky option of Mac OS X on the 'desktop' and FreeBSD for my servers.

USB Keyboard

[teslatug]

Have they fixed the bug where you can't select boot with USB keyboard because you're using a USB keyboard?

Re:BSD v Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhh, just to let you know they are stil ditro's. There are linux distro's that only come with the kernal, a graphical installer, a GUI and some other nice tools. Not all distro's have to come with everything and anything. Yes, there are people who hate bloat, which Linux distro's are famous for them.

Re:BSD v Linux

[rbullo]

Here you go. [over-yonder.net]

Download RC2 Here

[LogicX]

RC2 is actually out, just not listed on their download page. I found it on the Oregon Mirror [osuosl.org], however that mirror is extremely slow -- (20K/sec).

I'm hosting a mirror of DesktopBSD-1.0-RC2-x86-CD.iso [fpux.com]

Re:BSD v Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

You should try Slackware, it still ships with 2.4 and doesn't use ACPI by default.

Re:Too bad, fragmentation of FOSS Desktop efforts

[Brandybuck]

The BSD license isn't a packaged revolution. It's simply a notice of sharing. Sharing has been around even since before the cro magnon realized that a mammoth was too much for one hunter to eat.

Re:USB Keyboard

[Anonymous Coward]

A new keyboard mux is currently being tested for 6.0-RELEASE.

Re:Its not the kernel.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you that man pages should not be deprecated (they serve their purpose damn well, and have a very long tradition).

That said, texinfo has HUGE benefits for developers and users. It is a breeze for example to generate all sort of formats (pdf, html, text, info ...) for your manual, from the same .texi source. The integration with the autotools is also marvellous (make pdf, make html, make ps, ..).

I think both man and info should remain, with man helping you when you just need to look at that cmdline option you forgot, and info giving you the full manual with chapters, examples, etc.

Re:BSD v Linux

[pluggo]

Actually, in this particular case, you can fix things pretty easily. Corrupted Pythuon? Here's two fixes:

# wget http://python.org/python-source.tar.gz [python.org]
# tar xzf python-source.tar.gz*
# cd python-source/ && ./configure && make && make install

-or-

# export ROOT="/mnt/gentoo"
# emerge -C python
# emerge python

* Not real URL

Re:BSD v Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

> Tell you what, break Python and see how well all of the FreeBSD inspired Gentoo features work.

Well, duh. Break *any* part of *any* library or tool that your software depends on, and see how well it works.

What's your point? That broken software doesn't work? You're a friggin' genius, Clyde.

Re:Would you like a LiveCD with that?

[Ours]

Then you may want to try these: http://www.freesbie.org/ [freesbie.org] http://bsdeviant.unixpunx.org/ [unixpunx.org]

Re:BSD v Linux

[Mekanix]

Could someone point me to (or post) a lowdown on the potential benefits of BSD has over linux (or vice versa) that doesn't include wild speculation and unfounded cynicism?

I've been using FreeBSD exclusively on my Desktop for years. And I like it over any Linux-distro I've come across. Why?

* The FreeBSD Handbook. Most (common) issues you'll ever encounter are addressed here.
* Ports. It just works.
* Stable. Haven't had a crash in ages that wasn't caused by overheated HW.
* Logic. If something doesn't work out of the box and you need to go under the hood, I find FreeBSD much nicer to work with than any linux-distro I've come across.

Now, FreeBSD isn't perfect and it's certainly not point'n'click friendly. You'll have to edit tons of config-files. And then there are some small issues that are having me looking at linux again.

I'm "old" and tired, got a slow PC and don't really find it all that fashinating anymore to be building my own packages. It is possible to do binary upgrades on FreeBSD, but I'm always running into issues with updated ports and available binary packages are out of sync. Alas I've got to build those darn ports myself anyway. In this regard apt-get is so much better.

Attaching mp3-player, cameras, usb-sticks, usb-harddrive have become a nightmare. For starters I can't get usb2 to work, so I can't really use my usb-harddrive. Since FreeBSD doesn't automagically make attached devices available for the users, so you'll have to dig into config-files and there I have no less than 3 different to fiddle around with (usbd.conf, devfs.conf, devd.conf). In usbd.conf it would look something like this.

#MP3 Player
device "MP3 Player"
    devname "umass[0-9]+"
    product 0x0301
    attach "/bin/sleep 5; rm -f /dev/mp3player; /bin/chmod a+rw /dev/da0; ln -s /d
ev/da0 /dev/mp3player"
    detach "rm -f /dev/mp3player"

Problem here is if I attach my mp3-player AFTER I've attached eg. my camera, /dev/mp3player would be linked to my camera instead. I've haven't been able to figure out a smart way to attach my usb-devices yet and the documentation is lacking. So right know I can only attach one device at a time.

I think must linux-distro handles usb-devices better.

Re:I dont want another bsd distro..

[Anonymous Coward]

The FreeBSD project is getting a new installer [freebsd.org]. It is being written as one of the Google Summer of Code projects [freebsd.org].

There is a preliminary preview version [freebsd.org] (pre-alpha) available for first testing.

Note, it is based on BSDInstaller, the installer written originally for DragonFlyBSD.

Re:BSD v Linux

[JonnyCalcutta]

You are missing the point. Linux is a kernel and each distro is a Linux based OS. FreeBSD is _not_ a kernel - it is a full operating system. DesktopBSD is not just the FreeBSD 'kernel', with a 'graphical installer' and a 'gui'. It is the full FreeBSD OS with a few extra desktop-friendly tools added (I'm not judging it, just stating what it is).

Re:Too bad, fragmentation of FOSS Desktop efforts

[Tony]

now, i'm no fan of microsoft, but tell me this: . . . how much do you pay in taxes?

A lot more than Microsoft [theregister.co.uk], it appears.

Re:Journaling File System

[Just Some Guy]

However, in exploring it not that long ago, I found one glaring omission was journaling file system support.

Are you sure you need journalling, though? FreeBSD's softupdates cover most of the advantages of a journal, and the background fsck (which mainly makes sure that unallocated blocks are actually marked as such) lets you boot quickly.

I certainly don't think journals are a bad thing, but I've honestly not missed them.

Regarding vinum: what do you like better about Linux's logical volume management? gvinum (GEOM-based vinum) has been pleasant enough for what I've asked of it.

Re:Journaling File System

[bluGill]

Short answer: because FreeBSD has softupdates, which for most people turn out to be just as good, and for some better.

There are two ways to get the advantages most people want from a journaling file system. The obvious is to write a journal. FreeBSD instead spent time to make sure that meta-data could not get out of date in the first place, and thus there is no need for a journal. The latter is harder to implement, but has some significant advantages, and other disadvantages. For most people either will work fine, for those who have a case where it matters FreeBSD is implementing the journal. The real question is why nobody else is implementing softupdates so they don't need a journal in the cases where it is worse.

Remember, this is not a case where journals are always better than softupdates. For some workloads journals are better, for others softupdates is better. FreeBSD will soon be the only one to let you choose based on your real-world needs.

Re:Working on Athlon64 yet?

[phoenix_rizzen]

First thing to know about 64-bit systems, whether they be Linux, Windows, or BSD: avoid the nForce chipsets. They are not worth the hassle to get working reliably.

That's your first mistake.

Second thing to know about 64-bit systems, whether they be Linux, Windows or BSD: avoid the very latest, bleeding-edge, "I'm so cool, I got it first" technology. It's not worth the hassle to get working reliably.

That's your second mistake.

Third thing to know about 64-bit systems, whether they be Linux, Windows, or BSD: always, always, always research the hardware support before purchasing any hardware. It's not worth the hassle to get things supported after-the-fact. Doing this would have prevented the first two mistakes. :)

Re:Its not the kernel.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using JDK 1.4.2 on OpenBSD right now, which I built from the ports tree. No problems, but you have to adjust your memory quota in /etc/login.conf so that the JVM can allocate its object heap.

JDK 1.5 is in -current now, which means it'll be available in 3.8 this fall.