“Version 0.8.2 is now available, with some important bugfixes and changes. This update adds SMP support to the system, for our multi-processor friends, as well as fixing an issue with “mountroot”, after performing an installation. Please see the changelog for a full description of the changes. People running 0.8.1 need not download the full ISO again, since the update to 0.8.2 is available as on Online Update, through the PC-BSD update manager.” Read the release notes, and download here.
DesktopBSD is another interesting contender in the same space.
i agree, i like seeing BSD available as a desktop OS, if Apple computers can do it with OSX on a PPC then somebody else can do it on a X86 PC (PC-BSD)
Well,
I have used FreeBSD on thinkpad and it was simply great. However, it did not have hibernate/Resume. I switched to its closest linux version- gentoo. Since then there was no looking back. Due to excessive compiling, I tried Ubuntu. Now I have setteled with arch. Arch has the configurability of FreeBSD and the speed of gentoo.
PC-BSD will take long time before it comes to laptops.
to your laptops you mean
Nice to see that PC-BSD is being updated. Sometimes you gotta bite the bullet and go with a 1.0 release!
I downloaded the previous two releases. .8 didn’t boot well off my cd. All kinds of error messages looping. Downloaded that .81 but didn’t have time to install it. I’ll get .82 when I’m ready to install it.
Thanks
That way we can run a true decent unix OS on our x86 machines, I got fed up with linux kernel unstability; I remembered linus Dorvalds said that the kernel is a mess.
i find the 2.4.xx kernels more stable than the 2.6.xx kernels
I found both kernels to be unsable when doing a normal task of burning a DVD. It will hang the OS totally; check with Red Had Enterprise Linux forums for corrupt DVDs and how even the latest linux kernel produce it 2.6.12.x
I suspected first KDE to be the cause then I found that PC-BSD is not producing the same error while using KDE. I have found linux to produce the same problem with every distribution I’ve tested (almost 10). I don’t mean when i say linux kernel is a ness that Linux based applications and GUIs available for it are bad but rather they are excellent and could be applied to a much stable Unix kernel.
I found both kernels to be unsable when doing a normal task of burning a DVD. It will hang the OS totally; check with Red Had Enterprise Linux forums for corrupt DVDs and how even the latest linux kernel produce it 2.6.12.x
I suspected first KDE to be the cause then I found that PC-BSD is not producing the same error while using KDE. I have found linux to produce the same problem with every distribution I’ve tested (almost 10). I don’t mean when i say linux kernel is a ness that Linux based applications and GUIs available for it are bad but rather they are excellent and could be applied to a much stable Unix kernel.
That’s odd. I am running RHEL4 right now, and I burn DVDs all of the time. I have never had an issue on three different computers running RHEL4 burning DVDs, whether they be data or video. Perhaps the problems are related to certain DVD drives? A link to the forums would be helpful.
Well, what kind of data DVD where you trying to burn? Was it udf (Universal Disk Format), ISO, UDF/ISO. I had all kid of troubles on many different computers running many different distros of linux and in all of them the system hangs; GUI were KDE, GNOME, Window Maker. If I install windows I don’t have the problem; no problems with BSD flavors as well like x86 mac, PC-BSD 0.8. I even didn’t encounter the problem with Solaris 5.10 on x86.
I have also created at home a badly burned DVD that will instantly freeze all linux OSs,windows explorer and Zeta 1.0 tracker. the DVD has a circular blank sectors surrounded by burned data centrally and peripherally, thanks for windows corruptions which gave me this DVD that I could use for testing.
Note: The OS should never ever freeze if you insert a corrupt Optical Disk in it. It’s not only that but the OS should not freeze even if the whole OD drive fails. How can I tolerate that if I am running a workstation or a server?!
I switched to FreeBSD 5.4 for the first time as my desktop OS (previously using debian).
I have to say FreeBSD reminds me to the state of Linux several years ago. Many drivers/hardware dont work well enough, and autodetection is poor, and I ended up needing to recompile the kernel and change boot parameters for being able to burn CDs, later had to recompile again to disable native AGP so the nvidia driver would run. As desktop user, the desktop is not as smooth as Linux 2.6 (Except on disk operations and I/O which seems to be smooth, Linux 2.4/X11 would stall when recording DVDs), k3b only runs as root, and gnome lacks support from the gnome-system-tools. Since the community is smaller, I cant find many times how to configure what I need in forums and end up asking in irc. (Though IRC support has been very nice). As Developer, I found many tools to not work out of the box (gprof needs a recompile of libc with gprof enabled, valgrind complains of bus error, gdb breakpoints dont work sometimes).. It’s good I guess but I still find Linux easier. I’m also too used to gnu-style commands and many times that doesnt work on BSD (but that’s my fault i guess)
Hello Anonymous,
Here are a few things for you:
1) “I ended up needing to recompile the kernel and change boot parameters for being able to burn CDs”
burncd is in FreeBSD by default, aka you don’t have to recomile; however if you wisk to use CDRTools, then you have to recomile the kernel. Sidenote: I do remember that somewhere that scsi emulation can now be used as a loadable modual (*.ko).
I am not sure why you had to change to boot parms.
2) ” k3b only runs as root”
Here is a link for non-root access; its done that way for security. Here are some links for access under non-root:
http://www.freebsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php?t=24724
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/disks.html#USE…
Sorry, I am not familiar with the dev tools.
“I have to say FreeBSD reminds me to the state of Linux several years ago. Many drivers/hardware dont work well enough, and autodetection is poor…”
Because of the same reasons I am afraid it’ll take a pretty long time before PC-BSD becomes a viable desktop alternative. At the moment I can’t have sound and internet connection. I haven’t even tried to have Nvidia 3D support.
However I like the idea of a user-friendly BSD desktop: I hope they can make all the necessary improvements soon.
I think this project is really impressive! It’s coming along really well!
… that BSD is dead 😉
Wouldn’t it be nice if Linux users could stop trolling and spreading misinformation whenever BSD is mentioned? These same individuals don’t seem to like it when this happens to Linux…
Complaining about the lack of autodetection/ configuration in FreeBSD in response to an article about PC-BSD is both irrelevant and silly, since it is precisely these issues that PC-BSD aims to address, and at least on the systems I have tested it on, it’s doing a pretty good job.
If you have had less luck on your system, how about sending them a bug report?
no problems using the internet, sound or nvidia 3d support. PC-BSD has pbi files for nvidia driver ans nforce ethernet driver so it’s Just:
1- click to run the pbi,
2- write the root password to be allowed to install
3- choose where you want links (desktop and k menu are selected by default so you click next
4- Click finish.
This is a 3 click install….
My printer is working also…
Kde’s Noatum doesnt seem to be working ok yet but other players do.
Ah, on My PC the OS sometime freezes BEFORE the nvidia driver is installed (never again after)
It may be your faulty hardware, that causes the freeze, not BSD.. HW problems cant be solved by software.
Not the hardware, it’s certainly a problem with the generic “nv” driver and my GeForce2Ti
What i said is:
After i install the “nvidia” driver (the pbi 3d nvidia driver), replacing the original “nv” one, the freezing never happens again.
I am happy with the path PC-BSD is taking
I guess you guys will say that I am another linux troll, but I can’t get FreeBSD to properly detect my USB keyboard or mouse during installation. The keyboard is Saitek and the mouse is a non-cordless Microsoft USB mouse. I have found this true of PC-BSD as well. I did get it to pick it up by unplugging the mouse and keyboard and replugging it. Doing this is a hassle. I would understand if this if it happened every time…but every 3rd time or so it will see the keyboard and mouse. This inconsistant behavior is indicative of an immature system. My system has worked flawlessly with every Linux I have ever tried, and I have tried over 20 varieties. I read the FreeBSD Handbook and found it to be an awesome guide, but it does not address many small issues like the one I have documented here. FreeBSD is a good system. It is fast and has awesome server potential, but it has a way to go before it is good for everyday desktop use. I applaud what Apple has done with FreeBSD in making it a usable system. Does Darwin have these small issues worked out yet?
“This inconsistant behavior is indicative of an immature system.”
And of course, trolling on OSNews is an *excellent* way to get those small issues solved… 😐
There are tons of keyboards on the market. Most of them work flawlessly with FreeBSD. If you were unlucky enough to stumble into one that doesn’t, may I suggest you submit a PR (Problem Report)?
That would actually help to solve your problem.
Oh, and btw: FreeBSD, the OS you say has an awesome server “potential” (??), is actually serving more websites than any Linux distro (2.5 million active sites; Red Hat serves 1.6 million).
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/06/07/nearly_25_million_acti…
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/14/fedora_makes_rapid_pro…
So, I think it’s a bit beyond having “potential”, whaddaya think.
I love how statistics are so easily skewed. Yes, FreeBSD is a great OS, but hows about comparing ALL Linux web servers against ALL FreeBSD webservers. Comparing against one distro doesn’t really prove much.That’d be like saying that FreeBSD has a lot of potential on the desktop because it has more users than Damn Small Linux.
Of course, I don’t doubt the server capabilities of FreeBSD, but real, unskewed statistics would be better.
Oh, and add on to that the fact that not all Apache webservers are configured to tell you which distro they run on, as witnessed here : http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.groklaw.net
I love how statistics are so easily skewed. Yes, FreeBSD is a great OS, but hows about comparing ALL Linux web servers against ALL FreeBSD webservers.
The statistics I reported are hardly skewed. They simply show that FreeBSD serves more websites than any Linux distro. I don’t think this is debatable…
Of course, if you put all distros together, there are more servers running a Linux kernel than servers running FreeBSD; if that’s what you wanted to hear, then here it is
But that’s what I’d simply call *different* statistics…
The stats where all Linux distros are considered together aren’t any more real or any less skewed than the ones I reported.
Comparing against one distro doesn’t really prove much. That’d be like saying that FreeBSD has a lot of potential on the desktop because it has more users than Damn Small Linux.
Now, that’s definitely a skewed comparison, to say the least…
Of course I didn’t compare against “one distro”, I compared against *all* distros. So: FreeBSD has more users than Red Hat, more users than Suse, etc. *All* of them, not just “Damn Small Linux”.
Oh, and add on to that the fact that not all Apache webservers are configured to tell you which distro they run on
Now, at least this is a real issue. But not that relevant, I think: Red Hat serves 1.6 million websites, I highly doubt there are 1 million more that are actually hiding it…
-1 huh? Trust the freebsd fanatics to be in denial.
For the experience itself I just have to agree, freebsd seems to be in a pathetic state with regards to usb keyboards. Today I’ve done a little experimenting with freebsd and to my great astonishment it fails miserably in this regard. FFS even debian stable picks up this logitech keyboard, but freebsd? f–k no! It works until you get the menu where you start the installation part, and there just loses any track of there being a keyboard.. I tried with 5.4 as well as 6.0 beta 5, and the result was the same. No problem with Debian stable or any other linux I’ve tried, as does NetBSD and DragonFly.. Conclusion? FreeBSD and it’s followers has to pull their heads out of their asses and sort out their issues if they want to stay in the race. It’s not like a keyboard connected via usb is some sort of shiny, bleeding edge rocket-sience!
For the experience itself I just have to agree, freebsd seems to be in a pathetic state with regards to usb keyboards. Today I’ve done a little experimenting with freebsd and to my great astonishment it fails miserably in this regard. FFS even debian stable picks up this logitech keyboard, but freebsd? f–k no! It works until you get the menu where you start the installation part, and there just loses any track of there being a keyboard.. I tried with 5.4 as well as 6.0 beta 5, and the result was the same. No problem with Debian stable or any other linux I’ve tried, as does NetBSD and DragonFly.. Conclusion? FreeBSD and it’s followers has to pull their heads out of their asses and sort out their issues if they want to stay in the race. It’s not like a keyboard connected via usb is some sort of shiny, bleeding edge rocket-sience!
Or else maybe the users need to quit being downright f–king lazy and submit a bug report
“And of course, trolling on OSNews is an *excellent* way to get those small issues solved”
I am the guy whose post you responded to above. This is the sort of responses I got on the FreeBSD forums. Either I got RTFM, recompile the kernel (which I did), or told to buy another keyboard. You encompassed all options in one response. The mouse I have is a standard USB mouse. I do not use ps2 ports, I use only usb. The keyboard is a usb Saitek gaming keyboard I got for Christmas from my wife. I like it so it stays. Any linux will pick it up so why should not freebsd? This is a usb issue anyhow as FreeBSD has poor USB mangement. If this is the overriding attitude of the community it is no wonder that this system is lagging on the desktop. I really like FreeBSD’s stability and networking, but I will stick with Linux for now thanks.