http://www.osnews.com/story/14750/PC-BSD_1_1_Released Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:26:25 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?128884 http://osnews.com/thread?128884 just downloaded it. here I go into the world of BSD... Mon, 29 May 2006 22:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (nirvanix) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128911 http://osnews.com/thread?128911 http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=655&sli... Tue, 30 May 2006 00:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (chrishaney) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128912 http://osnews.com/thread?128912 Sadly, almost all i see in those screenchots is KDE. There should be an example of a pbi being installed and uninstalled. Truly beautyful. Tue, 30 May 2006 00:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pcbsdusr) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128913 http://osnews.com/thread?128913 I've been watching some of the Desktop/PC/BSD stuff rather closely, and I was wondering if someone could tell me (or point me in the right direction) what their thoughts were.

I'm interested in trying a BSD. I really just run a desktop machine - no server stuff. I have a lot of Linux experience (Gentoo/Slack/*Buntu), and am very interested in playing a bit with new OS's.

What are some of the differences between desktop and pc bsd? Pros and cons?

I'm leaning towards trying PCBSD to try the pbi installs...

Thanks
Todd Tue, 30 May 2006 00:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ThawkTH) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128916 http://osnews.com/thread?128916 At the risk of inviting a possible flamewar, I'm agreeing with ThawkTH here. Well, not agreeing, just, I'm kind of in the same position he is I think.

I've been messing around with Desktop and Server Linux for a few years, just casually. So far my favorite distro has been Ubuntu, and Dapper seems to be -really- promising, especially when XGL gets to the point of being feature-rich, with proper (non-compiled) theming support, and some of the crash bugs are taken out.

But after about two months of daily desktop use, I got really frustrated with having my settings break on an update. Or having to scour wikis to try and figure out how I could have mp3 sound playback, which I could pause, and then watch a video clip in Firefox or in Flash, and get sound there too. Or heck, just to have Gaim or Kopete actually give me a noise when someone messaged me, while I played some music.

There are other annoyances that would bother me, but I was able to look past the majority, and had a fairly positive experience with Ubuntu. And yes, I know Dapper isn't officially ready for everyday use just yet - that's not what this post was about.

I've just heard that BSD is done a bit differently. More controlled, I guess? But I'd really like a non-FUD, non-OMG,MicrosoftIsTheDevil point of view on what BSD does better than Linux... and what BSD would most give me the 'feel' of Ubuntu or, dare I say, Windows, in that it's basically ready to go out of the box with a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop, with Centrino wireless?

Thanks so much gang. Tue, 30 May 2006 00:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gabrielwalker) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128918 http://osnews.com/thread?128918 1. Congrats for PC-BSD and the team.

2. For DesktopBSD see http://www.allbsd.de/src/Flyer/FreeBSD/PDF/flyer-en-fbsd-desktopbsd...
or http://www.desktopbsd.net/

3. For PC-BSD you may find some info here: http://www.pcbsd.org/index.php?p=learnhome

4. Test them, hope you will enjoy both.

Have fun with BSD! ;-) Tue, 30 May 2006 01:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Daniel Seuffert) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128924 http://osnews.com/thread?128924 BSD's are usually more conservatively developed than Linux:
1.) They're a bit slower to get driver support; and they tend to do it better when they get it.
2.) Some of them are highly reviewed, not freeBSD, which most desktop BSD's seem to be using, but Net and Open.

And the second difference is that the coreutils are BSD instead of GNU.


Other than that. You'll still use Xfree/Xorg, Gnome/KDE/other, Gaim/other, etc just like you do on Linux. And FreeBSD has had a very strong linux binary support layer; so you can run commercial linux applications that don't give you source.

Going Windows to Linux, or even Mac to Linux, is a lot bigger a change than Linux to BSD. Let's just say, the two are very similar on the outside but the internal philosophies may be completely different; and the end-user graphical applications will likely be the same, except some small patches.

I wouldn't say they're more controlled though. But they are less bazaar in their development; not that the whole of a typical Linux based OS is going to be entirely developed like Linux is... Tue, 30 May 2006 02:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ma_d) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128935 http://osnews.com/thread?128935 I have used GNU/Linux as a desktop system for a while then I moved to FreeBSD. I had been using FreeBSD for a while on servers.

There are many GNU/Linux Distros which are philosophically different. Some focus on features (like SuSE), even if these means being blotted, others on correctness, like Debian and Slackware. However, I haven't found one yet that is as mature as FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is striving to make things perfect. Configurations don't break after upgrades (it comes with a configuration merging tool), programs are easy to install, there are very few conflicts, good support and very good documentation.

When I used GNU/Linux, I like it, it was a great system, great features, good multimedia support. But there were always little things that didn't work right and made me lose a lot of time. Sometimes I felt like reinstalling it all together (doesn't that remind us something). FreeBSD, on the other hand, is like a Japanese car or a Swiss watch, it doesn't look too cool nor too flashy, but it works great.

There are a few drawbacks: the flash support for FreeBSD is quite bad (it doesn't work for me since I upgraded to 6.1), there are no real 3D drivers. FreeBSD is not the right system for games and multimedia.

I think it is as good as the best linux distros when it comes to be used as a desktop system (except for for viewing web pages with flash). The only problem was that it is damn difficult to install for people who are used to systems such as windoze. I guess PC-BSD and Desktop-BSD have done a great job making FreeBSD accessible to all. Tue, 30 May 2006 04:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (manix) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128937 http://osnews.com/thread?128937 Does FreeBSD support Broadcom-based WiFi cards? In Linux, I am currently using NDISWrapper to get it going.

Thanks! Tue, 30 May 2006 05:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (traderjb) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128939 http://osnews.com/thread?128939 This is good news and a great effort from the the PC-BSD team. Thanks Kris and thanks to all the people involved in the PC-BSD project Tue, 30 May 2006 05:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (vikramsharma) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128948 http://osnews.com/thread?128948 I'm loving PC-BSD more and more on every new release. I just miss one app to be able to run PS-BSD full time instead of Ubuntu: Crossover Office.

Here's the petition:
http://www.bsdnexus.com/petition.asp

If you are a registered Crossover user, please vote for BSD support here:
http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=573

Sorry my poor english. Tue, 30 May 2006 06:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Governa) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128954 http://osnews.com/thread?128954 http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.1R/hardware-i386.html#WLAN Tue, 30 May 2006 07:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Daniel Seuffert) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128958 http://osnews.com/thread?128958 How to configure WPA and other encrypted connections in FreeBSD/PC-BSD/DesktopBSD is here: http://www.freebsdmall.com/~loader/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/wireles... Tue, 30 May 2006 07:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (antik) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128960 http://osnews.com/thread?128960 "There are a few drawbacks: the flash support for FreeBSD is quite bad (it doesn't work for me since I upgraded to 6.1), there are no real 3D drivers. FreeBSD is not the right system for games and multimedia. "

Have you read anything about PC-BSD 1.1 release lately? There is 3D support and nVidia native binary driver in pbidir.com and I personally played Linux versions of Unreal Tournament 2004 and Quake 4 without problem.

ATI 3D works on my Radeon 9600Pro lightning fast and this is OSS DRI driver.

Flash 7 PBI is removed from pbidir cos Adobe sucks and they won't allow download their crap from other sites.

BAN FLASH!!!! Tue, 30 May 2006 08:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (antik) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128967 http://osnews.com/thread?128967 Hi antik

Maybe there is some misunderstanding here...

Please see http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=96374

Afaik there's no prob with a Flash 7 pbi. Flash 6 is another matter, it is marked FORBIDDEN and will expire 2006-06-07, see http://www.freshports.org/www/linux-flashplugin6/

HTH, Daniel

Disclaimer: IANAL Tue, 30 May 2006 08:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Daniel Seuffert) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128970 http://osnews.com/thread?128970 ATI 3D works on my Radeon 9600Pro lightning fast and this is OSS DRI driver.

The OSS ATI driver supports chipsets up to the 92xx series. The 95xx and newer series aren't supported, unless ATI has recently released new specs. Tue, 30 May 2006 09:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (evangs) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128971 http://osnews.com/thread?128971 I should add before I get flamed to death, the by support I mean support for accelerated 3D graphics. Tue, 30 May 2006 09:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (evangs) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128976 http://osnews.com/thread?128976 FreeBSD does have NVidia driver from NVidia (which I use) and older cards (like Matrox) are supported by DRI/DRM. It works fine. ATI drivers I'm not sure about. Tue, 30 May 2006 09:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hevonen) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128977 http://osnews.com/thread?128977 FreeBSD kernel got drm support built in:

# Direct Rendering modules for 3D acceleration.
device drm # DRM core module required by DRM drivers
device mach64drm # ATI Rage Pro, Rage Mobility P/M, Rage XL
device mgadrm # AGP Matrox G200, G400, G450, G550
device r128drm # ATI Rage 128
device radeondrm # ATI Radeon
device sisdrm # SiS 300/305, 540, 630
device tdfxdrm # 3dfx Voodoo 3/4/5 and Banshee Tue, 30 May 2006 09:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (antik) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128993 http://osnews.com/thread?128993 Still no Intel i8xx though!

edit: What's with the threading?Edited 2006-05-30 11:35 Tue, 30 May 2006 11:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (LB06) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?128994 http://osnews.com/thread?128994 I am going to give PC-BSD a try for fun and learning. Could someone clarify one point for me? It is my understanding that this .pbi package system is find and dandy, but that you can also, just like on free bsd use the pkg_add -r command to access the entire free-bsd ports tree for many software titles, correct?

So...other than that PC-BSD has this new package system for "some" software....and has nice graphics and out of the box "ease of use"...it's REALLY Free bsd underneath and can be run like it...including the package/ports system?

Thanks...if anyone can shed light on this...as I would be interested in exploiting the system as much as possible. Tue, 30 May 2006 11:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bobmeister) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129002 http://osnews.com/thread?129002 Still no Intel i8xx though!

edit: What's with the threading?

Ups I forgot:

# Direct Rendering modules for 3D acceleration.
device drm # DRM core module required by DRM drivers
device i915drm # Intel i830 through i915
device savagedrm # S3 Savage3D, Savage4
device tdfxdrm # 3dfx Voodoo 3/4/5 and Banshee

But right now default kernel don't have drm for intel and savage compiled in- you have to do it yourself or load with kldload. Tue, 30 May 2006 12:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (antik) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129004 http://osnews.com/thread?129004 So...other than that PC-BSD has this new package system for "some" software....and has nice graphics and out of the box "ease of use"...it's REALLY Free bsd underneath and can be run like it...including the package/ports system?

Yes, it IS FreeBSD underneath and you can install from ports or with pkg_add. And you can update kernel and userland too. Only thing you have to do is restore permissions for mount* and umount commands for automatic drive mounting feature and compile atapicam device to your new shiny kernel if you don't use default config file located in /PCBSD/config/ directory. Tue, 30 May 2006 12:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (antik) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129007 http://osnews.com/thread?129007 Thanks for that....as I am ready to give it a go....only question has been to do straight Free BSD or to try something like PC-BSD. Either way...I like the philosophy, coming from a relatively seasoned Linux user who is a little sick of the chaos in that world. Tue, 30 May 2006 12:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Bobmeister) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129072 http://osnews.com/thread?129072 The major factors involved in choosing a desktop operating system are (in no particular order) application support, performance, stability, usability, and hardware support. It seems to me that Linux has a substantial lead or headstart in most of these areas, so I wonder why anyone would want BSD on the desktop. In particular, there are a handful of Linux distributions that are heavily inspired by the philosophy and infrastructure of FreeBSD, such as Gentoo and Arch, and should be comfortable for most stubborn BSD users.

The point is that the momentum is irreversibly on Linux's side, and it would take a major feature/functionality delta to shift favor to any of the BSDs. Combined with the shoddy track record of the FreeBSD project for the past couple years, there's just not a strong case for BSD on the desktop. Sure it's possible, and there are now some user-friendly desktop BSD distros, but the question for me always comes down to, why?

What is so much better about the FreeBSD kernel and coreutils that makes it a better desktop or a better platform for desktop development? Recent design changes have made uniprocessor performance a second-class citizen to their ugly (yet admittedly improving) SMP locking scheme. In contrast, most of the SMP locks on Linux just compile away to nothing on UP configurations.

Show me a BSD implementation of GNOME or KDE that is feature-complete, relative to the vanilla Linux installation, and I might check it out. But I just can't imagine a situation that would enable BSD on the desktop to get beyond feature parity with Linux distributions and establish a leadership role in the desktop space.

But, this is certainly interesting fodder for disto junkies, so by all means, check it out. Tue, 30 May 2006 16:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (butters) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129094 http://osnews.com/thread?129094 Nice to see that the responce to the PC-BSD on osnews has increased. Last time when PC-BSD 1 was released there were hardely 10-15 posts now we have 25+ !!! Its a progress in right direction.
Orkut users can join the PC-BSD community and share exachange knowledge! Tue, 30 May 2006 17:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TusharG) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129115 http://osnews.com/thread?129115 thanks gang, unfortunately this said nothing about my wifi card, which is a Linksys WMP-11 card which uses a broadcom chip that is not opensourced. It works great on Linux and Windows using NDISWrapper. I guess I was hoping I could do something similar on BSD. Oh well. Tue, 30 May 2006 18:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (traderjb) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129123 http://osnews.com/thread?129123 I am more intersted every time I see PC-BSD info, I have 56k that sucks, but hopefully broadband will be my conection soon. I do have Getright & Bittorent though. Tue, 30 May 2006 18:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Edward) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129132 http://osnews.com/thread?129132 Don't give up hope just yet...

I've just started to look under the hood of this release as a VMware client, so no need for NDISwrapper. But you may want to check out the 'ndisgen", "ndis" and "ndiscvt" man pages for a NDISwrapper equivalent (NDISulator/Project Evil). More info at:
http://www.pcbsd.org/wiki/index.php/PmWiki/UsingFreeBSDsNDISSupport

The FreeBSD docs may help as well:
http://www.freebsd.org/docs.html Tue, 30 May 2006 19:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ctl_alt_del) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129182 http://osnews.com/thread?129182 Source: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-w...

The FreeBSD NDISulator (otherwise known as Project Evil) takes a Windows driver binary and basically tricks it into thinking it is running on Windows. This feature is still relatively new, but most test cases seem to work adequately.

In order to use the NDISulator, you need three things:

1. Kernel sources
2. Windows XP driver binary (.SYS extension)
3. Windows XP driver configuration file (.INF extension) Tue, 30 May 2006 21:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dennis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129189 http://osnews.com/thread?129189 Because I can. I prefer to have FreeBSD under the hood (including ports) and I experience no limitations compared to a Linux desktop. The setup may be tougher but for me that's not a point at all. I even don't use PCBSD because I prefer GNOME over KDE, just a matter of choice. Tue, 30 May 2006 21:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dennis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?129273 http://osnews.com/thread?129273 Another difference between DesktopBSD and PC-BSD, which I believe noone has commented on, is the kernel differences. PC-BSD is based on the 6.x kernel, and DesktopBSD is based on 5.x (5.5, I believe).
Aside from that, DesktopBSD uses only the traditional ports system for the package manager. PC-BSD gives you the choice of using traditional ports, OR using their new "dependency-hell free" version of PBI manager. With PBI, each app installs into its own directory, along with any required libraries. As a result, you may end up with duplicate libraries in different app directories, since the app's libraries aren't shared. Wed, 31 May 2006 04:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (djohnston) Comments