In his 'A week with...' series, Justin has used PC-BSD 1.3 this week and is sharing his experience. In other news, the PC-BSD team unveiled a sneak peek of the new look of the software installation wizard.
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Member since:2006-12-06
4. Portsnap don't stall- it downloads over 40MB or ports image over slow internet connection (PPPoE in his case)- just have to wait and be patient.
Maybe it doesn't stall.... but it sure as hell looks to me like it has every time I've tried it. It would progress to something like 25% and then... nothing.
If it is still doing something, then may I suggest some form of feedback to let the user know that.
And it does seem strange that if it's just because of slow downloading, then why does it appear to be doing something for the first 25% but then appear not to be doing anything after that???
Does my broadband work fine most of the time and then just coincidentally collapse each and every time I'm 25% of the way thru using Portsnap in PC-BSD... on two completely different broadband providers and types???)
Member since:2006-07-15
Member since:2005-09-10
I agree with everything you said except this:
PC-BSD is first to use latest KDE and various technologies that is never used on FreeBSD and can help FreeBSD and KDE FreeBSD projects with testing...
On the contrary! PC-BSD uses only stuff already tested on FreeBSD - e.g updated KDE to 3.5.5 only after it was available in ports. In fact, that's where I would like to see some changes in PC-BSD. For instance, for months now, the xorg team of freebsd has been testing xorg 7.2rcX - and for the past 1 month, it has been working fairly well. PC-BSD could have tried adopting 7.2, then do a number of releases to help test (they specifically ask for testers), but went with 6.9 instead. I understand concerns about stability, but don't claim that PC-BSD helps testing new stuff in FreeBSD. It doesn't. (And there are some areas that it could: HSP's new USB stack, Ariff's work on multimedia, etc.).
Member since:2006-05-19
On the contrary! PC-BSD uses only stuff already tested on FreeBSD - e.g updated KDE to 3.5.5 only after it was available in ports.
We got KDE 3.5.5 for our internal beta versions from development cvs repository long before it appeared in ports.
..but don't claim that PC-BSD helps testing new stuff in FreeBSD. It doesn't. (And there are some areas that it could: HSP's new USB stack, Ariff's work on multimedia, etc.).
You mean we should test new (alpha) features on our users? We bring FreeBSD for desktop users and your claim that we do nothing for testing new stuff is nonsense. If you think that we (PC-BSD Team) is sitting in cave and waiting for ports appear then you are wrong- we file bugreports and help troubleshoot many FreeBSD desktop specific bugs and of course we know about Xorg 7.2, DRM/DRI, about HALd disaster, current USB suckiness (sry, limitations/bugs), crippled features in KDE- broken by Linux oriented developers (NFS, Samba, CUPS...), ZFS, Gjournaling filesystem, MAC, etc...
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The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
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Member since:
2006-05-19
I have to bring some corrections to this 3 day journey:
1. On second cd you'll find OpenOffice.org 2.1 not 2.4 as stated in this article (looks like he got second iso from mirror that was not synced at the moment he downloaded it)
2. Portsnap is FreeBSD standard application, not PC-BSD one (PC-BSD have just front-end for it).
3. He talks about BPM and Kports but didn't mention portinstall/portupgrade.
4. Portsnap don't stall- it downloads over 40MB or ports image over slow internet connection (PPPoE in his case)- just have to wait and be patient.
5. About OpenOffice.org MIME types- first time when you doubleclick on some openoffice file you'll see choose application menu- select OpenOffice(whatever you want) and select "remember application". Next time it would open your document with your favourite application. I know this is small issue and this would be sorted out in next release.
6. Startin PBI-s can't be so slow- eg. OpenOffice.org got no KDE dependencies and loads GTK and friends anyway.
7. Of course there is no graphical way of removing unused applications (Never heard of it in KDE- except PBI deinstallation) but you can remove them from menus with menu editor. Just press right mouse button on menu and press "Edit Menu", then remove.
8. iXsystem didn't bought PC-BSD project, they just bought PC-BSD trademark- project stays BSD licensed and mostly volunteer driven.
9. Launching PBI install files from external drives was crippled in initial 1.3 release, due to "noexec" mounting option hardcoded into HALd (Now it's removed in 1.3.01). HALd have various problems with FreeBSD USB system but I hope those annoyances would be sorted out in couple of months if not faster.
PC-BSD is first to use latest KDE and various technologies that is never used on FreeBSD and can help FreeBSD and KDE FreeBSD projects with testing, bugreports, fixes and suggestions for upcoming releases. We (PC-BSD Team) are working on enhancements/bugfixes and you can expect only stabler, faster and more polished future releases.