Anyone tried PC-BSD or DesktopBSD?


Recommended Posts

Tried PC-BSD... it is easy to install and easy to run. To me, the GUI looked a little washed-out, but that was me....... it ran without any issues at all.

Barney

stupid question: why use BSD insted of Linux if they're both easy to use?

586410701[/snapback]

Well, they use a different kernel (for what it is worth). Linux uses GNU for its OS (commands), and BSD uses their own command implementation (decended from Unix, rather than a non-Unix clone of unix).

But, slap KDE on there, and there really isn't much difference to the end user (at least, to my understanding).

yeah...as far as i understand it the end user won't notice much of a difference (in theory at least) ...it's just BSD is supposed to be well known for it's slightly greater stability which has generally suffered from a lack of broad hardware support (which i hear is changing though, at least for wireless hardware) ...i could be wrong, no? :unsure:

<-- gonna install DesktopBSD on a VM and play a bit ;)

No flame war on BSD vs Linux pls. i jus wanna hv my hands-on experience with BSD..

btw, seems *bsd can't let me install (detect) on my linux partition (currently playing with Slackware, dual boot with Windows XP). seems if i really hv to install *bsd, i hv to re-partition my only (working) harddisk

my 40GB harddisk is currently divided into:

- 2 fat32 partitions, one for Windows xp, another one for storing my own stuffs, music, some cached copies of some bsd/linux iso's e.g. kubuntu, slackware, mepis, linspire, xandros etc

- 1 resier3 linux parition for Slackware Linux 10.x (which is scheduled to be removed to install SUSE 10 beta 3 next week, if i dun install *bsd)

- 1 linux swap

Edited by crossbonez

I havnt tried Desktop-BSD yet, i hear its ok... right now im using PCBSD.. i really like it alot, the .pbi's are really a treat to use, very and i mean VERY easy, works just like a windows.exe... only downside is that there arent very many packages available in that format, in which case I use FreeBSD's ports system which is also very easy to use, and has all the pakcages you could ever need

I haven't tried PCBSD or DesktopBSD, however, I have been using OpenBSD since day 1. No offense, but on some machines, Linux distro (even SlackWare) fails to boot, and OpenBSD comes to rescue and save my day.

I trust OpenBSD more than I do for Linux. In terms of performance, I actually gain more server performance out of OpenBSD than from Linux. With OpenBSD, I have the user friendliness of installing programs, and no more dependencies horror. Sure you can do that with Gentoo/Debian, but neither of these distros really run too well on older machines now a day.

I have a really old laptop (Pentium 200 Mhz, 32 Mb, Trident grahics, 5 gig HD ), and sadly, no Linux distros would boot or detct the hard drive (except Damm Small Linux). OpenBSD (FreeBSD didn't boot at all), on the other hand, boots up like charm. After minimal installatioin, I was on wireless network downloading packages (Damn Small Linux could not even get wireless card running).. and within a few hours, X Windows running flushbox was in good order..

I am glad that PCBSD and DesktopBSD are making progress in user friendliness; however, if they in fact use their proprietary installation format, I think that's truly a huge step back from Ports system.

Edited by ThunderRiver
No offense, but on some machines, Linux distro (even SlackWare) fails to boot, and OpenBSD comes to rescue and save my day.

586410877[/snapback]

No offense, but I haven't seen a single machine yet that BSD worked on and Linux didn't, the problem has for the most part been between the chair and the desk.

I tried Desktop BSD and it didn't detect my keyboard :blink:

Another differance between linux and *BSD is the way they organise their file system. The thing that originally attracted me to Desktop BSD was the way it had a seperate folder for each program and it it's dependancies / libraries, having been more used to Windows, that setup seemed more familiar to me.. I'm getting used to the file system now tho..

I've tried PC-BSD: it's impressive. Easy to install, easy to maintain, and quick. You can use the .pbi to install more apps, or get FreeBSD ports. For BSD, it's a big step forward.

Now, is it really any different from linux? KDE is KDE, so the end user experience is no different. I guess you wouldn't really notice the difference until you start getting into the guts of the OS.

  • 2 weeks later...
No offense, but I haven't seen a single machine yet that BSD worked on and Linux didn't, the problem has for the most part been between the chair and the desk.

586411237[/snapback]

Yeah and I have never seen a machine that ran Linux but not BSD :p Now more seriously I DID see one machine that did not ran Linux, but where FreeBSD worked much better. It was an HP workstation SATA hard-disks, PCI express, pretty recent network card, at that time it was hard (in fact impossible) to find a distro that worked easily with the system. FreeBSD ran perfectly in safe mode.

Yeah and I have never seen a machine that ran Linux but not BSD :p Now more seriously I DID see one machine that did not ran Linux, but where FreeBSD worked much better. It was an HP workstation SATA hard-disks, PCI express, pretty recent network card, at that time it was hard (in fact impossible) to find a distro that worked easily with the system. FreeBSD ran perfectly in safe mode.

586482265[/snapback]

I've also come accross various situations where some hardware would be painlessly available to BSD whereas it required more mucking around with linux. I've also come accross the opposite. Who really cares anyway. They are both great oses to play with.

As for the ePenis, I'm pretty sure that setting up Damn Small Linux would be harder than say FreeBSD, so I'm not sure where the BSD = ePenis Enhancement comes from :p

I've also come accross various situations where some hardware would be painlessly available to BSD whereas it required more mucking around with linux. I've also come accross the opposite. Who really cares anyway. They are both great oses to play with.

As for the ePenis, I'm pretty sure that setting up Damn Small Linux would be harder than say FreeBSD, so I'm not sure where the BSD = ePenis Enhancement comes from :p

586483704[/snapback]

Difficulty isn't much of a factor compared to the elitism of the task. The best way to describe it would be considered borderline flamebait, so I won't go there.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Not even an OLED display on the laptops. Also it seems that the laptop design isn't the same as the Surface Ultra model. Looks like bargain bin at high prices.
    • make your own notch - it's not that hard
    • VirtualBox 7.2.10 by Razvan Serea VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, 7, 8, Windows 10 and Windows 11), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4, 2.6, 3.x, 4.x, 5.x and 6.x), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD. Some of the features of VirtualBox are: Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox. Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers. VirtualBox 7.2.10 changelog: VMM: Fixed issue when CentOS 10 VM was not booting due to the message "Fatal glibc error: CPU does not support x86-64-v3" (​github:gh-642) Devices/EFI: Fixed booting issue when ARM VM had less than 1024 MiB of RAM assigned (​github:gh-679) USB: Fixed issue when it was not possible to attach USB device to headless VM on Apple Silicon/macOS 26.4.1 (​github:gh-631) Storage: Fixed issue when VIRTIO-SCSI device was not recognized as SSD device by guest system (​github:gh-634) Network: Fixed issue in E1000 emulation code which triggered debug log creation (​github:gh-645) Network: Fixed issue in E1000 emulation code which prevented OS/2 guest from booting (​github:gh-683) Linux Host: Fixed issue when VMs could not be started due to kernel oops (​github:gh-639) Linux Host and Guest: Fixed issue when kernel modules were failing to build with openSUSE 16.0 kernel Linux Host and Guest: Added initial support for kernel 7.1 Linux Host and Guest: Added extra fixes for RHEL 9.8 kernel (​github:gh-676) Linux Host and Guest: Added possibility to build source code using NASM instead of YASM as the assembler (​github:gh-520) Linux Guest Additions: Added initial support for Extended Data Control Protocol for clipboard sharing with Plasma on Wayland guests (​github:gh-33) Linux Guest Additions: Added extra fixes for preventing vboxvideo kernel module build with kernel version 7.0 and newer (​github:gh-655) OS/2 Guest Additions: Fixed issue when Shared Folders automount and clipboard sharing stopped working (​github:gh-551) Download: VirtualBox 7.2.10 | 170.0 MB (Open Source) Download: VirtualBox 7.2.10 Extension Pack | 19.1 MB View: VirtualBox Home Page | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • OK, now ask yourself how are they going to enforce that law? By requiring every single adult to prove their age and provide their legal identity documents to an UNREGULATED 3rd party company that already has a long track record of multiple data breaches. Not to mention, parliament have voted AGAINST this ban, twice, and Starmer is going ahead anyway. So, where's the democracy here, because that looks like dictatorship to me. The solution here is parental responsibility, not government control. Run some public service announcements on TV and UK social media teaching parents how to setup parental controls. That's already been proven to actually work. But the, this is not and has NEVER been about keeping kids safe. It's about control and monitoring. Watching what you're doing online and controlling what you can see and what you can say.
    • Interesting read. I knew the adware was quite controversial at the time, however never realised to the point The Guardian wrote an article about Patchou. I just said no and enjoyed his creation, I’d probably be a lot more wary of something like that today though.
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Month Later
      Windows Guy earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Prasann earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Prasann earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • First Post
      Dys Topia earned a badge
      First Post
    • Collaborator
      vjlex earned a badge
      Collaborator
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      525
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      180
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      105
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      89
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      70
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!