"PC-BSD is not a Linux distribution, but rather it could be considered among the first major FreeBSD-based distributions to live outside of the official FreeBSD. Like most distributions, it has implemented certain features in a way that attempts to distinguish it from the competition, and I will focus mostly on these differences. This test drive is intended to give an overview of what PC-BSD is and why one would consider using it."
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Member since:2006-10-08
"Could you elaborate? (I fail to understand practically)"
Regarding CLI subsystem: FreeBSD's CLI subsystem does come in unaltered manner, the same is true for PC-BSD. There are lots of things that make CLI life comfortable, just to mention a few from /etc/csh.cshrc:
alias ls 'ls -FG'
alias ll 'ls -laFG'
setenv EDITOR mcedit
setenv PAGER less
setenv BLOCKSIZE K
setenv LSCOLORS ExGxdxdxCxDxDxBxBxegeg
setenv LC_MESSAGES en_US.ISO8859-1
setenv LC_COLLATE de_DE.ISO8859-1
setenv LC_CTYPE de_DE.ISO8859-1
setenv LC_MONETARY de_DE.ISO8859-1
setenv LC_NUMERIC de_DE.ISO8859-1
setenv LC_TIME de_DE.ISO8859-1
set autolist
set promptchars = "%#"
set prompt = "%n@%m:%~%# "
The last two ones generate a comfortable prompt, the line prior to them enables the C Shell's auto completition.
In Germany, we have Umlauts (a, o and u with two dots on top, and the Eszett ligature). They don't work in CLI mode by default, here, some settings in /etc/ttys and maybe exchange of console fonts is needed.
NB that KDE is not affected here, it has its own language configuration.
Regarding KDE: There are "FreeBSD hackers" (I'm not sure I'm using this term correctly) that do not like to use KDE because it does not offer them what they need, or it is to complicated to configure it this way. As you may know, there are people who do not need (and therefore do not use) desktop environment functionalities, because they prefer a window manager that is easier and faster in usage. They range fron tiling WMs over XFCE, Metacity up to WindowMaker. This may be seen in terms of keybpard configurability, too.
But please do understand that these are assumptions made out of own experiences and observations. It does not make them false just because they don't describe the majority of users.
"I'd like to see that. Could you give me the URL?"
I would be glad to do so, but I think I read that statement here at OSNews. Feel free to browse through PC-BSD related articles to find out more. If I remember correctly, someone replied to my "wish" to see a PBI installer on "plain" FreeBSD and tole me this tool would already be avaulable; I thought of something like "pbi_add" or "pbi_install", followed by a PBI package name.
"In other news, I think in OSNews that modding up whould be restricted to IPs that are different from that of the author of the message."
I don't understand this, sorry. Could you be more precise? Do you assume me to mod up my own comments?
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2007-03-04
maybe because the CLI subsystem is a mess by default, maybe because KDE slows them down doing their work
Could you elaborate? (I fail to understand practically)
As far as I know, there is already an (experimental?) PBI installation manager for FreeBSD
I'd like to see that. Could you give me the URL?
In other news, I think in OSNews that modding up whould be restricted to IPs that are different from that of the author of the message.