"Overall - DesktopBSD is a pleasure to run and a breeze to install. It is an excellent choice for a new BSD user, a not terribly sophisticated computer user, or an old salt who just wants a good, solid, reliable desktop that won't take days to install and weeks to configure and just wants to get on with it."
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Member since:
2005-07-06
I highly agree that this is a welcome distro in the BSD world. It is very much like the Debian "wrappers" that provide ease-of-use around a Debian core. PC-BSD is very easy to install. It make it easy to install Java, OpenOffice, NVidia drivers, etc. However, since you can user the regular FreeBSD ports, you are free to install anything supported by FreeBSD! I know how to do installs the "hard" way (gotta love that disklabel program in OpenBSD), I just don't feel a need to do so!
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All well and good - excellent packaging of BSD - will give Linux a run for its money sometime but for now setting up a printer still sucks..... major problem IMO!
Have you tried it lately? CUPS printing was supposed to have been fixed by one of the recent releases (1 or 2 previous). I haven't used it lately, so I can't verify the printing status, just repeating what I read.
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2005-07-02
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That thing is called "DesktopBSD", we want to ease installation, update and use for ordinary people, maybe most of them with absolutely no idea of BSD. A typical admin would use scripts or the like, not an GUI (for some good reasons).
Normally a desktop user has nothing to do with bind, Apache and Postfix.
But don't forget: This is FreeBSD 5.4, you can install every app via ports, packages, the ports GUI, from sources or even with pkgsrc if you like. FreeBSD has over 13.600 applications available within the ports, use them in DesktopBSD as well as in FreeBSD.
If you have questions, please read the handbook first. Otherwise look for help in a forum, newsgroup etc.
Kind regards, Daniel Seuffert
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2005-07-06
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I find it odd they used the old installer approach. They could've easily gone with a livecd containing an installer app that the user runs (e.g. like knoppix), which is much more elegant, IMO.
LiveCDs are fine to demo a product at a friend's house, but for daily tasks you don't want to run a LiveCD, you want the full speed of your Raid-0 array of 2x 15,000 rpm HDD's 
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i think the poster had in mind a livecd that have a app on it that work very much like a normal installer. start it up and you can use it to partition the hardrive, set up users and programs, and then run the install.
allso, livecds make for excelent rescue cds as you have a whole os to use. not just some bare bones with a stack of scripts to fix common flaws.
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Sorry, just forgot to add that link: http://www.desktopbsd.net/index.php?id=37 
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Does DesktopBSD have a binary package system to upgrade the software application without have to do 'make install clean'? My experience with FreeBSD has been that it is easy to install and workwith but upgrading installed applications is a pain and leads to multiple system breaks. It can be fixed but is no place for most people who are just looking for a computing platform.
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FYI: you cannot just do a "make install clean"; that does not resolve dependencies. Your looking to use "portinstall -N" which is part of "portupgrade":
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=portupgrade&apropos=0&sekt...
Don't forget to CVSup and build an index before installing or upgrading software.
PS: somethings have changed about the index file (recently).
PSS: Been out of FreeBSD for a while. Double check on the mailing lists about the upgrade/install process. Sorry about being blunt; but you are missing a few steps. No disrespect intended.
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DesktopBSD may just be it! I suggest DesktopBSD studies how Ubuntu succeeded (I mean the non-technical aspects) and see if it can replicate the formula. The way to the masses' hearts is through an easy to use desktop; most people will sacrifice flexibility for something that just works out of the box! I also think it should find a way to solicit meaningful donations (>$10) to fund its work. Perhaps a sponsor list in one of the menus somewhere (make it searchable); look, no one wants to die unknown, and being a guaranteed mentioned name that lives on for posterity might just be appealing enough to many. All in all, great job!
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FYI: you cannot just do a "make install clean"; that does not resolve dependencies. Your looking to use "portinstall -N" which is part of "portupgrade":
Actually "portupgrade -NRr" if you want to install a new app and "portupgrade -rR" if you want to upgrade a particular app.
Member since:
2005-08-06
Hardware support is less wide with Linux than Windows....
Normally I drop an e-mail to the HW manufacturer putting pressure that I need drivers or specs. In some cases it works.
NVidia for instance is one who has produced drivers for a variety of systems... kudos to them for that =)
Another hot tip is to buy HW which there are drivers for instead of buying HW and then try to find drivers.
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What are the main differences between DesktopBSD and PC-BSD? They have mainly the same goal, right?
Unless something's fundamentally different between the too, I think the BSD-community would be better served by coordinating their efforts or they'll end up with half a million or so indistinguishable distros like with Linux.
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We also have a review on BSDGangster.org on PC-BSD...http://www.bsdgangster.org/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle...
That may give you a idea. Desktop BSD seems to be a little more polished as of right now, but pc-bsd has a new package manager that if done right could be a very nice addition to the bsd community
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2005-06-29
I have version of Desktop BSD (might be RC1) on one of my machines, and although it shows promise, I will be replacing it soon. The various configuration utilities seem to be well laid out, but I have had some issues (I should probably get around to filing some bug reports). The software updating tool always hit conflicts with updating something and wanted me to resolve the conflicts manually. I can understand that happening in some cases, but it was really annoying to hit that when all I tried to do is upgrade the packages from the base install. The networking configuration tool was pretty interesting, but was a bit biased toward DHCP (I forget the exact details). I use a static configuration, and after I start the machine, I have to fire up the network tool and manually tell it to start the networking stuff. That was basicly a showstopper for me. It definitely has potential, and I will be keeping my eye on it, but in its current state, it doesn't really suit me.
Member since:
2005-08-08
