PC-BSD 1.4.1 has been released. “A update to PC-BSD has been released today, version 1.4.1. This new version may be obtained from our download page, additionally users who are running version 1.4 may download a patch to upgrade.” It’s mostly a bugfix release.
Actually this version is how 1.4 release supposed to look like. FreeBSD/PC-BSD is good platform for programmers, students and enterprises because of these features:
1. All kind of programming languages included in base system by default (perl, python, qt, etc.). And of course GCC and subversion.
2. Intel wifi drivers (no 3945abg yet though).
3. All kind of free codecs- you can play almost all video and audio files without installing anything manually.
4. Sound card support is great- all common cards detected automatically and FreeBSD sound mixing is unbetable- you can play multiple sound instances and applications simultaneously- everything is mixed transparently in kernel level.
5. With LZMA compression installcd size is down from 700MB to 550MB (next release will have more goodies inside
. Installation is faster too, with fast cpu, it took ~5minutes on P4-3.2GHz with 1GB ram and 400GB sata drive.
6. No trouble messing with bootloaders like GRUB- FreeBSD boot0loader is fully automatic- no configuration changes needed for booting up multiple operating systems like Linux, Windows, other BSDs.
7. Did I already mention that Java is native?
8. Big thanks to nVidia for their great drivers.
Btw PC-BSD 1.4.1 is based on FreeBSD 6.3-PRERELEASE.
I have been using FreeBSD for about a year and never thought about something that your post reminded me of. You said the FreeBSD bootloader is fully automatic. I normally use GRUB and manually modify it to add other distros etc. If you have the FreeBSD bootloader on the MBR, and then install another distro on another partition, does the FreeBSD bootloader automatically add an entry to its menu the next time you reboot? How does that actually work?
Yes, it is automatic, but it is not pretty.
It basically just looks at the partition table, the partition IDs, and adds entries with a best-guess at the name of the OS on the partition (based on partition ID).
The menu then looks something like:
F1: FreeBSD
F2: MSDOS
F3: Linux
Where F1 loads whatever is on the first partition on the disk, F2 loads whatever is on the second partition, and so on.
Crude, but it works.
*snip for brevity’s sake*
So far, it looked like PCBSD keeps all the GPLcruft away on optional packages that were not installed by default. The default PCBSD install doesn’t really include stuff like GCC, Java, Perl, and Subversion, does it? Or is that only FreeBSD, and not PCBSD?
So far, it looked like PCBSD keeps all the GPLcruft away on optional packages that were not installed by default. The default PCBSD install doesn’t really include stuff like GCC, Java, Perl, and Subversion, does it? Or is that only FreeBSD, and not PCBSD?
Yes, PC-BSD 1.4.1 got GCC, Perl and Subversion in base install. Java is optional component (installed as PBI) due to Sun license restrictions.
Ouch. Looks like I’ll have to go pull it out… thanks.
I just installed PCBSD in dual boot config with XP on a friends PC. Both Ubuntu Gibbon and OpenSuSE kept nagging during the partitioning about ntfs mount errors, I eventually got fed up and tried PCBSD.
What do ya know, PCBSD just partitioned and installed its bootloader in the MBR, where do you want to go next.
Now if only ix systems will make up their minds and implement a package system that is in sync with the FreeBSD ports system and doesn´t perse interfere with the installed packages and libraries from the CD, we are pretty much on track I would think.
Anyway nice release, thank you:-)
You could try DesktopBSD.
You could try DesktopBSD.
Indeed, according to the DesktopBSD FAQ:
DesktopBSD uses all of the powerful and functional features that FreeBSD offers while PC-BSD rather introduces new, alternative systems instead. The best example of this is DesktopBSD’s Package Manager, which is in fact simply a comfortable front-end to the reliable and well-established FreeBSD “Ports” system. PC-BSD on the other hand utilises a new system of installing packages using a *.pbi package. The latter does not integrate with the system installed but wraps itself around the operating system and uses what it needs.
Thanks for the tip:-)
The Desktop is dead, we need laptop BSD (and linux).
*Bulletproof, easy, automatic wireless configuration.
*Suspend/resume to/from sleep/hibernate. Out of the box, every time.
Just to name 2 items of note.
Thank you for the hard work guys, I really love how easy to upgrade to a newer version.
“Thank you for the hard work guys, I really love how easy to upgrade to a newer version.
“
That’s a very useful feature, especially in the following situation: Whenever I downloaded a PC-BSD n to test it, they come along with a PC-BSD n.1 with updates. 🙂
PC-BSD is a good BSD based OS for users who don’t want to build a system on their own. KDE contains most of the stuff average users need, the PBI store contains the rest. On todays hardware, it runs fast enough to make a good consistent using experience.
Personally, I may say that PC-BSD is not my OS of choice. I’m using FreeBSD since the 4.0 days and I never found what advantages PC-BSD could give me which a manually tailored system can’t. Furthermore, it requires more ressources, so it’s not very fast on older hardware that someone might want to reactivate.
After all, a very good starting point into the world of BSD, especially for those who just want to try out. I always like to hand PC-BSD CDs around.
Still no official live CD? (Or is it only for install by design?)
“Unofficial” LivePCBSD is here:
http://forums.pcbsd.org/viewtopic.php?p=57583#p57583
It was based on 1.4alpha development release but it is usable- nonworking PC-BSD components was stripped out. Based on hard work of FreeSBIE guys.
This “bugfix” release only introduced new bugs. Numerous programs with Russian locale ceased to work on install, for example LinuxDC++. If you have a system with Russian language do not install this bugopatch, otherwise you won’t be able to start any application!