Submitted by After much hard work, the PC-BSD team is pleased to announce that version 1.3 BETA2 is now available for download. This version adds support for installing in languages other than English, and addresses many numerous bugs found in BETA1. 1.3 BETA2 can be downloaded from the beta download page. You will also need to download 1.3 CD2 if you wish to install in languages other than English. Please report any and all unreported bugs on the BugsDB or the forums.
What can I say, PC-BSD is looking better and better.
Easy to install, easy to play with… it is a solid work and I look forward to try each new build.
Really great work, lots of potencial. Kudos for the creators.
Edited 2006-11-26 18:51
b2test4 (known as BETA2) installer annoyances:
System Update/Repair option:
1. Test3 found my previous PC-BSD installation and let me upgrade it,
unfortunately it messed up with kernel config somehow and I was unable
to start system.
2. Test4 didn’t found my PC-BSD installation at all and I even can’t go back to choose fresh install- it gave me only option instead- reboot and start over.
System accounts :
3. gave me error every time when I try to type password, I think it should complain only when you press Add button, not before.
Drive selection:
4. should install FreeBSD bootloader by default when there is more than one partition. If someone want to install other bootloader then they can always uncheck that option.
5. Empty page before installation is not very informative, we need some additional information there, before user decide install pcbsd onto their system. Maybe this window is better suitable for “License Agreement”?
6. Back and Next button in installation progress window is mandatory, they should be removed at all. I expect there “Cancel” button instead.
7. I selected custom partitioning with this layout (common in unix land):
/
/boot
/usr
/var
SWAP
and after installation I was greeted with following error message:
“No /boot/loader
No /boot/kernel/kernel”
I suggest to make default partitioning scheme at least for beginners- one root partition is considered lame in unix. Time to make installation more modular- we should “go back” to freebsd installation method that is polished with hard work and proved itself for years.
8. Installer can’t see space that is not partitioned already on hard drive and thus users can’t install PC-BSD into free space. CRITICAL BUG.
9. My screen resolution is set to 1600×1200, monitor complains about not proper size- my 19″ lcd native resolution is 1280×1024. Why make link to XF86Config from xorg.conf? XF86Config file should be gone long time ago. Xorg can set proper monitor resolution itself, without any premade configuration. Looks like my pimpmyvga script is more suitable than our current one, at least you can set proper screen resolution…
Further suggestions:
1. “Time elapsed” would be nice in installer, “Time remaining” would be nice too.
2. Sound and network test buttons are good way to show that operating system is fully functioning.
3. I see that Install CD loads GEOM Stripe module, but we use GEOM Mirror, why load stripe if it is not used?
4. In time zone setup I see no GMT- this would be useful too. Separating region selection and then nearby city (with GMT+/- information) would be less time consuming than scrolling up/down large list with tiny scroll stripe.
5. Autologin function sould be optional, not selected by default.
6. Crystal-Clear icon theme looks jagged- previous Nuvola was much better.
Andrei Kolu
PC-BSD Quality Manager
Edited 2006-11-26 19:42
“7. I selected custom partitioning with this layout (common in unix land):
/
/boot
/usr
/var
SWAP
I’d like to ask you two questions:
First, where’s your home partition (typically /home)?
Second, why do you place kernel and modules on a separate partition (/boot) and not onto the root partition (/)?
In most cases you would have something like this:
/dev/ad0s1b = SWAP
/dev/ad0s1a = /
/dev/ad0s1d = /var
/dev/ad0s1e = /usr
/dev/ad0s1f = /home
The root partition / holds /boot as well as /stand or /etc and the entry points for further mount stages.
“and after installation I was greeted with following error message:
“No /boot/loader
No /boot/kernel/kernel”
Maybe because it’s not located on the boot device /; the /boot parition is not mounted and therefore /boot/loader and /boot/kernel/kernel cannot be found. Try changing settings in /boot/loader.conf, see the “currdev” and “rootdev” settings documented in /boot/defaults/loadder.conf.
“I suggest to make default partitioning scheme at least for beginners- one root partition is considered lame in unix.”
Completely right.
“Further suggestions: […] 5. Autologin function sould be optional, not selected by default.”
But I think newbies and Steven Q. Average like it the way it is. 🙂
Edited 2006-11-26 20:52
[quote]First, where’s your home partition (typically /home)? [/quote]
On FreeBSD /home is usually a symlink to /usr/home
And where is /tmp? Without a /tmp you may fill your /
[quote]First, where’s your home partition (typically /home)? [/quote]
On FreeBSD /home is usually a symlink to /usr/home
And where is /tmp? Without a /tmp you may fill your /
I can mount home partition later from other hard drive or over NFS. /tmp partition is 800MB, memory based, swap space backed, virtual filesystem in PC-BSD by default.
“On FreeBSD /home is usually a symlink to /usr/home”
That’s not a good idea. It’s better to have user data (/home) separated from system data (/usr = UNIX system ressources) partitionally. /home should reside on a different partition (or even hard disk, or NFS if you like). I don’t know why FreeBSD does this by default, it should be changed anyway.
“And where is /tmp? Without a /tmp you may fill your /”
Good point! You’re right, if / is small enough, let’s say with 128 MB (which is enough), it would be filled very quickly.
There are two good ways to have /tmp moved away from the root partition /.
First way is to have /tmp attached to a memory disk. It could work similar to this:
# vnconfig -e -s labels -S 1024m vn1
# disklabel -r -w vn1 auto
# newfs /dev/vn1c
# mount /dev/vn1c /tmp
# chmod 4777 /tmp
It’s fast and does not need to be cleaned automatically or manually. But it consumes RAM, of course.
Second is to have it symlinked to /var/tmp where /var is big enough. /tmp should be able to hold enough data, so the /var partition could be 2 GB – that should be enough.
(The implicit third way is to have a real /tmp partition.)
[/i]That’s not a good idea. It’s better to have user data (/home) separated from system data (/usr = UNIX system ressources) partitionally. /home should reside on a different partition (or even hard disk, or NFS if you like). [/i]
I heard this mantra before, when I first installed linux, so it was a little weird when I saw home under /usr in FreeBSD. It is similar, albeit less dangerous than the www should be under /var
I think it makes sense with linux distroes where a system update means a clean reinstall (and sadly, most linux distroes I have tried fall in to that category) – but it doesn’t make any sense with FreeBSD, where the preferred way of upgrade is via a buildworld, buildkernel, installkernel, installworld mechanism.
Having your data on a separate partition isn’t safer either. In 99.99% of data corruptions are due to hardware failures, so having a separate partition on the same disk won’t help you there. It isn’t safer either unless you never ever execute scripts or run progs from your home partition (because in that case, you may argue for mounting /home with noexec).
I don’t know why FreeBSD does this by default, it should be changed anyway.
That’s a somewhat arrogant advice, because you didn’t try to understand why home is under usr in the first place. Besides the reasons cited above (/usr is as good as any) it makes a lot of sense under FreeBSD. >90% of FreeBSD users use ports to install software. Ports is under /usr. Software needs space to build, some more than others (openoffice needs ~8 Gb!). That means that you have to create a /usr partition large enough to accomodate possible future uses – say a 12Gb usr. Now that 8Gb remains unused for the better part of the year (I don’t build ooo.o more than twice a year). Having /home under /usr I can use that space, and when I need it, I can simply move my data to external storage (USB, DVD, etc.).
In fact, that is what you are supposed to do if your data is important for you: do regular backups (which again, obsoletes the /home should be on a separate partition argument).
Also, you have to understand why separate partitions exists under unix – it’s not because of security for the most part (except for logging for instance). It is because you can have different filesystem parameters for different usage patterns. Having /var on a separate partition (relatively small, but with frequent writes) allows for tuning for it’s specific use characteristics. Similarly, having /home on the same partition as /usr makes sense, because you have both static and changing data on both (downloads, edits on /home, installed software and software builds on /usr).
So no, you don’t have to have /home on a separate partition. It has no significant benefits on FreeBSD – in fact, it has only downsides, like wasted space (we are talking gigabytes here). In fact, if you have a good linux distro (like archlinux) which has a similar update mechanism (some say debian is like that, but I have botched my system with dist-upgrade more than once), it doesn’t make sense on linux either. It may have been OK years ago before linux distroes were not mature enough to handle system updates (some are still not there), and when external storage was expensive and rare, but when you can have 4Gb of data moved to a <1$ DVD in less than 5 minutes, you don’t have to say things like “it should be changed anyway”
Especially for a desktop oriented distribution like PC-BSD 
EDIT> read man:tuning for further details about why separate partitions exists. It is also a good example why you should first think of how you will use your system, and then decide what layout is best for it, not the other way around. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tuning&apropos=0&sektion=0…
Edited 2006-11-27 14:57
I think having home on it’s on partition is one of the coolest thing about using Unix/Linux. It has saved me several times.
Perfect example, Ubuntu and Linspire create 1 partition. So I made a Linspire machine for my brother using the default install, the joker filled up the 100 GB hard drive with videos and MP3’s. Well once the drive filled he could no longer log in for some reason. This is a problem with Ubuntu also.
I re did his machine and put home on it’s own partition on another hard drive. He knows it’s on it’s own HD but you can’t really tell using it in KDE, so it works well. If he fills it up so what. He has the Whole 100 GB for his storage now. And if it needs to be moved it can be remounted as home in a new computer etc no problem.
Yes, I understand the practicality of a separate /home in case of certain linux distributions. If I were to install ubuntu or Linspire, I would certainly use a separate /home – not because it is generally better to do so, but because of the quality of these distributions
Creating a single partition is not a good idea either, because of different usage characteristics. For instance, /var tends to have lots of small files and frequent writes, and the FS can be tuned accordingly (in fact, it does some automatic tuning without user intervention). if you have everything dumped on a single partition, you can’t take advantage of that.
Having /home under usr is a perfect solution for me, even on linux (for an average home system). This is how I do partitioning:
/ – 256Mb
/tmp – 256Mb (or memory disk setup)
/var – 1024 Mb
/usr – the rest
You cannot accurately predict the possible space you need for /usr, not even in linux, and this solves your problem. Not enough space to install X or Z? Just move your mp3 or movie files to a DVD, problem solved. Since there is no writing occuring during login to /usr (only tmp and var) – a situation you experienced should never occur (in fact, it should never occur anyway, your example just shows that the devs. of these distributions didn’t do their job).
It wasn’t /home being on a separate partition that saved you – what saved you is actually /var or /tmp having their own partition (even if their shared that partition with /usr).
Actually, your example proves that if anything, it is important to have /tmp and /var (or just var with /tmp being just a symlink to /var/tmp) on a separate partition, while you can put /home and the rest anywhere you want
I guess it would be the same thing. Long as you have the place that is going to take up the most space separate from var and tmp then you are good.
My brothers is:
Drive 1 40 GB
/boot – 150 mb
Swap – 1 GB
/ – 38 GB
Drive 2
/home – 100 GB
I guess it would be the same thing. Long as you have the place that is going to take up the most space separate from var and tmp then you are good.
Exactly. If you had only one drive, that’s the only thing you have to pay attention to. With two drives, your setup makes sense (although I bet you have at least 30Gb unused there on your first disk
.
Yes this is true. I do there is a lot of free space left. But he is using that to download his install files and other junk.
“Having your data on a separate partition isn’t safer either. In 99.99% of data corruptions are due to hardware failures, so having a separate partition on the same disk won’t help you there.”
If you have corruptions while R/W operations on the /home partition, the /usr partition won’t be harmed in most cases.
“That’s a somewhat arrogant advice, because you didn’t try to understand why home is under usr in the first place. Besides the reasons cited above (/usr is as good as any) it makes a lot of sense under FreeBSD. >90% of FreeBSD users use ports to install software. Ports is under /usr. Software needs space to build, some more than others (openoffice needs ~8 Gb!).”
You’re not telling me anything new. Therefore, many FreeBSD users have their ports moved to /home/ports on a separate /home partition where the most space is available. Because compiling etc. usually is of a temporary nature (make clean), /usr may be to small dimensioned. If you decide to have 20 GB of program stuff and you want to compile OO, you have to do it elsewhere.
But that’s nothing that is related to partitioning in general, it’s related to dimensioning the partitions.
“Having /home under /usr I can use that space, and when I need it, I can simply move my data to external storage (USB, DVD, etc.).
In fact, that is what you are supposed to do if your data is important for you: do regular backups (which again, obsoletes the /home should be on a separate partition argument).”
A generally good advice. Novice users will experience the wisdom in it after losing all important data. 🙂
But if /home is on a separate partition, you simply can dd the whole partition (device) to a backup media. That’s very confortable.
“Having /var on a separate partition (relatively small, but with frequent writes) allows for tuning for it’s specific use characteristics. Similarly, having /home on the same partition as /usr makes sense, because you have both static and changing data on both (downloads, edits on /home, installed software and software builds on /usr).”
Right, you can do some optimization here, optimization for space / time, the use of soft updates or the inode size.
“So no, you don’t have to have /home on a separate partition. It has no significant benefits on FreeBSD – in fact, it has only downsides, like wasted space (we are talking gigabytes here).”
Cannot confirm.
“[…] but when you can have 4Gb of data moved to a <1$ DVD in less than 5 minutes, you don’t have to say things like “it should be changed anyway”
Especially for a desktop oriented distribution like PC-BSD 
“
You can even put a complete partition of 40 GB onto a backup tape in one rush. 🙂
“It is also a good example why you should first think of how you will use your system, and then decide what layout is best for it, not the other way around.”
Another good advice. But Steven Q. Average won’t care, because he’ll use his computer for everything. 🙂
If you have corruptions while R/W operations on the /home partition, the /usr partition won’t be harmed in most cases.
And…??? How many times does that happen actually? Anyhow?, what is more precious … your data or your /usr binaries?
You’re not telling me anything new. Therefore, many FreeBSD users have their ports moved to /home/ports on a separate /home partition where the most space is available. Because compiling etc. usually is of a temporary nature (make clean), /usr may be to small dimensioned.
Funny. You only have to move your ports to home if you create a separate home partition, right? My point was exactly the usefulness of having /home under /usr to avoid this situation… I don’t think there are “many” freebsd users who move ports to home, unless they take your “you should move home from usr to a separate partition” advice
) Which is why no one should 
But if /home is on a separate partition, you simply can dd the whole partition (device) to a backup media. That’s very confortable.
Comfortable? Say I have an 50 Gb home partition, how do I dd it to a DVD? Yes, you can use tapes, but who uses tapes anyway? Hosting companies probably, but not your average PC-BSD user. In fact, I very much doubt that there is any PC-BSD user who has a tape drive on his home PC
)
You haven’t convinced me of the usefulness of separate home under freebsd. And you know what? I thought exactly the same way as you do when I first came to freebsd (from linux of course) – until I realized my foolishness when I ran out of space during compilation and had to move ports to home
/usr/home makes much more sense on FreeBSD from almost any perspective, in fact, I set up archlinux that way (well, almost: /, swap, /tmp, /var). Ext3 became very robust and safe filesystem, so there is no danger of corruption (except due to hw failure, in which case it doesn’t matter if you have home on a separate partition). That way, I don’t have to worry about needing more space if I decide to use their build system (which is somewhat similar in philosophy to freebsd’s ports), and they also use a rolling release system (or whatever they call it) – meaning that releases are simply snapshots of the state of the OS at one point in time (in other words, archlinux is always current, and suprisingly, actually it works).
“I don’t think there are “many” freebsd users who move ports to home, unless they take your “you should move home from usr to a separate partition” advice
) Which is why no one should 
“
I even know long time FreeBSD users who do their build works (ports, sys etc.) on the /var partition which is big enough for this task (10 GB); /var usually has the highest R/W rate there.
“Comfortable? Say I have an 50 Gb home partition, how do I dd it to a DVD? “
Maybe rather with dd but with tar -M and cdrecord? 🙂
“Yes, you can use tapes, but who uses tapes anyway? Hosting companies probably, but not your average PC-BSD user. “
“Who uses tapes anyway?” 🙂 Tape drives are not only used by hosting companies, financial authorities (as an example) use them too because they’re much more reliable for bigger amounts of data. You’ll find them in data processing centers used by government, even in ones used by warehouse companies.
“In fact, I very much doubt that there is any PC-BSD user who has a tape drive on his home PC
)”
I doubt that any PC has a tape drive. 🙂
“You haven’t convinced me of the usefulness of separate home under freebsd. And you know what? I thought exactly the same way as you do when I first came to freebsd (from linux of course) – until I realized my foolishness when I ran out of space during compilation and had to move ports to home
“
Actually I have the ports in /usr/ports and /home on a different hard disk. But I think I’ll try /home@ -> /usr/home the next time I setup a system at home. Personally I never experienced an out of space situation on a separate /home partition, even on small disks, say 6 GB (which the workstations have that are used at my work); and the backup is so much easier as I described above because I can’t afford saving data to a DVD. Sometimes, the old fashioned way still works fine. Just imagine how many AS/400s are still in use. 🙂
Another fine thing: You can duplicate workstation installations partitionwise, say the /, /var and /usr partitions, while keeping a former /home as it is – just using dump & restore.
I doubt that any PC has a tape drive. 🙂
Haha, right. I never saw a tape drive in my life (I mean real, I saw them in movies from the 80’s
)
Just imagine how many AS/400s are still in use. 🙂
You’ll like these pics (they are still working @ our univ.)
http://www.cis.unideb.hu/new2/Szerverek.htm
Another fine thing: You can duplicate workstation installations partitionwise, say the /, /var and /usr partitions, while keeping a former /home as it is – just using dump & restore.
That’s a good trick
I only bothered to learn dump & restore after doing a complete reinstall when it turned out my /usr wouldn’t suffice (my very first install of freebsd, 5.l at that time, had ~3 Gb for usr!) 
Wish I knew that earlier – it’s a fine repartitioning tool if you have a spare disk 
Bye!
“Haha, right. I never saw a tape drive in my life (I mean real, I saw them in movies from the 80’s
)”
I’m not talking about tape drives with big spools (as you might know them from the IBM MTUs), I mean the compact tape systems actually in use at larger scale data processing facilities.
For the PC platform, there have been floppy tape drives and parallel tape drives some years ago. The Sun SparcStations I once had as well as the SGI machines I use now had / have tape drives connected externally via SCSI. Still a fine thing if you have data amounts bigger than a DVD can hold. Backup via DVD reminds me to the Amiga 500: “Please insert disk 12 of 24.” 🙂 So the bigger capacities of the tapes are very good to handle. And you don’t need ISO-9660 filesystems, you can save all file attributes and restore them. Interoperability is great if you do something like tar cf /dev/sa0 bla.mpg on one system and mplayer /dev/sa0 on the other one. 🙂
“That’s a good trick
I only bothered to learn dump & restore after doing a complete reinstall when it turned out my /usr wouldn’t suffice (my very first install of freebsd, 5.l at that time, had ~3 Gb for usr!) 
Wish I knew that earlier – it’s a fine repartitioning tool if you have a spare disk 
“
Yes, it’s very simple AND secure. Usually, I use /stand/sysinstall to do partitioning and setting the boot loader (instead of fdisk, disklabel and newfs). Let’s assume you have your source system on ad0 and the designated target on ad1. Then you’d do something like this in single user mode (after umount and fsck):
# mount /dev/ad1s1a /mnt
# cd /mnt
# dump -0 -f – /dev/ad0s1a | restore -r -f –
# mount /dev/ad1s1e /mnt/var
# cd /mnt/var
# dump -0 -f – /dev/ad0s1e | restore -r -f –
… similar way with /usr (f) and /home (g) …
Note: All partitions on ad0 are umounted except / which is mounted -r to have mount, dump and restore available from /sbin.
(BTW: I use FreeBSD regularly as a main OS since 4.0 along with Solaris and IRIX. So I can tell from the useful similarities of these systems.)
To come back on topic: Yes, you can do this with PC-BSD as well. 🙂
Wow, you had way more experience with unix than I do … all the more surprising your initial stance about /home placement
But I see your point now, and the benefits it has to you as a proud owner of a tape drive 
Me, I used linux from RH 7.2 to Mandrake 9.1, then switched to FreeBSD 5.1 (when it came out) – and stayed with it since than. Installed PC-BSD out of curiousity, but since then, I moved back to FreeBSD STABLE, tweaked the kernel, etc., so the only thing reminding me of PC-BSD is that I still can install PBIs apparently (I have exactly one PBI installed – openoffice) – and automounting of media when you insert them (usb, cd/dvd) works.
I had a maxtor drive once from a branch that tended to fail a few weeks after the warranty period. So before it came to that, I bought a new drive, and used the method you described (exactly the same command with dump & restore) to move (and adjust the size) of my existing partitions. Use that drive for backups since then.
“But I see your point now, and the benefits it has to you as a proud owner of a tape drive
“
Tape drives are for lazy people. 🙂
“I had a maxtor drive once from a branch that tended to fail a few weeks after the warranty period.”
The usual time of accident. Sometimes I think some disks are built in order to do so… on the contrairy, there’s many hardware that works for years – it’s older, slower, but sometimes more reliable.
Edited 2006-11-28 22:36
Adding one more point, this release doesn’t seem to install in a Qemu virtual machine (0.8.2). It either doesn’t continue booting or it stops at configuring X. (this done with and without using kqemu)
Its about time to add Gnome support to PC-BSD.
I would love to see a version with Gnome as well. I like KDE a lot but having a choice of desktop managers would be nice.
Either way, PC-BSD seems to be coming along nicely.
Its about time to add Gnome support to PC-BSD.
Nah.
I think for this kind of project you’re better off picking a DE and concentrating on making the best-integrated environment you can based around whichever DE you chose.
Why waste resources on integrating and supporting multiple DEs when this time and effort can be better spent elsewhere?
I would like to see the PC-BSD guys take some time to clean up their website though, so it looks a little more professional.
Why focus on KDE? It is not as that good.
Thay should give user a at least minimal choise:
Gnome
Xfce
KDE
I’d like to see most of the Window managers like E17, Icewm, XFCE, GNome ported on PCBSD…
E17, XFCE, Gnome are WMs?
Then why even bother PC-BSD? go FreeBSD all the way and have everything build for YOU not for masses.
Edited 2006-11-27 11:47
From what I read on their forum, they won’t offer any other D.E. any time soon because they have other priorities and probably because they want to have a unified product. If you want a Gnome or XFCE desktop, you’re better off using FreeBSD.
From what I read on their forum, they won’t offer any other D.E. any time soon because they have other priorities and probably because they want to have a unified product. If you want a Gnome or XFCE desktop, you’re better off using FreeBSD.
We ALREADY offering other window managers BY DEFAULT. FluxBox is default if you choose “server” installation method.
First way is to have /tmp attached to a memory disk. It could work similar to this:
# vnconfig -e -s labels -S 1024m vn1
# disklabel -r -w vn1 auto
# newfs /dev/vn1c
# mount /dev/vn1c /tmp
# chmod 4777 /tmp
It’s fast and does not need to be cleaned automatically or manually. But it consumes RAM, of course.
You guys actually read what I wrote already? We use SWAP backed /tmp and it won’t consume that much memory.
/etc/rc.conf:
# tmpmfs Flags
tmpmfs=”YES”
tmpsize=”800m”
tmpmfs_flags=”-S”
That’s all- this is default in PC-BSD.
Edited 2006-11-27 13:27
I really like the idea of having GNome into BSD… The speed at which PCBSD is catching… Linux guys need to worry on desktop side…. and also need to learn how they are making things easy to use. I’d like to see most of the Window managers like E17, Icewm, XFCE, GNome ported on PCBSD…
Infact PCBSD need not have to give pre-installed these packs… if they could just provide pbi file for it and let user install it! to experience how easy it is to install a package in PC-BSD!
“I’d like to see most of the Window managers like E17, Icewm, XFCE, GNome ported on PCBSD…”
At least on slower machines it would be nice to have something faster than KDE, for example XFCE or even IceWM. This would be a good attempt to have more people using PC-BSD whose PCs are not the newest ones.
BTW: WindowMaker would be great too. 🙂
After much hard work… of copying FreeBSD and changing the default desktop background, …the PC-BSD team is pleased to announce that version 1.3 BETA2 is now available for download.
I’d be interested to see a review that focused on the differences between this system and a typical desktop Linux. Link anyone?
Just one question:
Does it manage to install itself without screwing my partitioning scheme?
Last time I tried it, it thought Linux got it all wrong and messed everything up.
Seemed to be a *BSD specific problem…
I’m just asking because I might have just enough time to check it out but not enough to restore my whole system afterwards…
Yep, it screwed my partition scheme too, though that was with PC-BSD 1.2.
I hope they have it working right on the next release because I’m really curious on how it will work on my laptop.
On the other hand I understand their concentration in KDE, though I would really like to see Gnome working on it. Maybe a .PBI package will do the trick?
I second that – a nice, user friend BSD with GNOME. an idea i’ve had floating around in my head (as well as a friend of mine) for years, but niether of us have the talent to do a damn thing about it.
Now add Beryl.
All in good time
I tried modular xorg on freebsd (see http://wikitest.freebsd.org/ModularXorg) – and it worked fine, but failed to build beryl for some reason. But they are (I mean FreeBSD xorg port guys) are working on it (latest modular xorg + beryl goodies). Once they hit official ports, you’ll see them in PC-BSD. Probably in 1.4.
People end up using GNU software on PC-BSD.
So what is the point of choosing this over the GNU/Linux?
Are people choosing PC-BSD because they like the FreeBSD kernel over Linux? Or because they like installing a Linux emulator to run an unstable flashplayer and whatnot?
Do CrossOver Office and Cedega work yet?
Are there x86-64 and PowerPC versions of PC-BSD with corresponding x86-64 and PowerPC PBI packages?
Is there 3D accelerated drivers for my new ATI card yet? Are the NVIDIA drivers available to x86-64 users and does it properly support SLI configurations?
The PBI system is interesting. PBI files are self-contained, including all the dependencies in one package. How well does this work when software is also grabbed from ports? Are duplicate (possibly conflicting) dependencies installed?
These are important questions that should be answered to those deciding between some Linux distribution and PC-BSD.
Edited 2006-11-27 18:33
People end up using GNU software on PC-BSD.
About what GNU software you are talking about?
Well I am moving out with my sister at the biggining of the year, gonna have broadband in 2007. Just seems cruel to have to be on dial-up now.