PC-BSD 9.1 has been released. "The PC-BSD team is pleased to announce that version 9.1 is now available! This release includes many exciting new features and enhancements, such as a vastly improved system installer, ZFS 'Boot Environment' support, TrueOS (a FreeBSD based server with additional power-user utilities), and much more!" PC-BSD 9.1 is based on the soon-to-be released FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE with several enhancements, including an updated installer, better ZFS support during installation, bug fixes and new GUI configuration/administrative utilities.
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Member since:2006-12-05
I agree on FreeBSD being a pain to configure as a complete desktop OS, yet awesome for servers. My main problem with PC-BSD has always been its way of packaging programs, Windows-style, with everything needed for a package contained within the package. Good for eliminating dependencies (duplicates), but not for conserving disk space, unfortunately. In a way, I kind of wish DesktopBSD was still in development... it was similar, also very good, but with a more traditional style of package management.
I am tempted to give the latest version a try though, overall it sounds good, and I do like BSD in general. Some *huge* upgrades appear to be coming up with FreeBSD 10, BTW... of course, that's probably a year or more away, but it's already sounding good.
Member since:2006-10-08
You can use the native FreeBSD methods of installing software from the ports collection (from source) or from binary packages; port management tools such as portmaster can be used. Still this method does not "play 100 % nice" with PBI which is the preferred method of installation on PC-BSD. But if you want to get rid of (old-fashioned) manual downloading and handholding, there's a CLI tool for PBI installations (which includes the abilty of scripting and automating processes). PBI offers easy binary methods of installing and updating your software through a centralized control mechanism while providing decentralized entry ways for software. Users who do not want to deal with the "complicated" ports collection will probably find PBI easier to use, and professional users can still rely on efficient tools.
There's an excuse, erm... reason for that: disks are huge and cheap today. :-)
Member since:2010-03-11
That is not how PBI are handled anymore. Originally, installing a PBI would include all of its duplicated dependencies, but that is no longer the case. The last couple of releases have used a small filtering process which removes duplicate libraries. This means installing a package, like Firefox, doesn't take up any more room on PC-BSD than it would on, say, Linux.
Member since:2005-06-29
Member since:2006-12-05
I broke down and said "fsck it" and decided to delete the Win8 partitions to make room for a new one last night. I haven't put a whole lot of time trying PC-BSD out yet, but
Two things that don't work:
- Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02). No surprise here--I'm lucky if I can find a Linux distro that supports this wretched, god damn wireless card... I've given up on even bothering to try to get it to work several years ago, so I don't blame BSD on it. I honestly no longer even care about that card.
- Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs CA0106 Soundblaster. This one's a little more important, and it's probably the only thing that would prevent me from using PC-BSD exclusively on the machine as a desktop OS.
One thing I am exremely impressed about is its memory use with KDE. It's generally very low at ~200 MB or less for the most part, even while installing packages (something that never seems to fail to spike memory use in most Linux distros I've tried). Of course, I wasn't really heavily using the system so I'll be doing more testing, but that's very impressive so far. openSUSE guzzles several hundred megs right after logging in, quickly leading to swapping.
Member since:2006-04-19
The third and final WWDC product I want to talk about is - of course - OS X 10.9 Mavericks. While iOS 7 was clearly the focus of this year's WWDC, its venerable desktop counterpart certainly wasn't left behind. Apple announced OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the first OS X release not to carry the name of a big cat.
We already talked about iOS 7 yesterday (after a night of sleep, it's only looking worse and worse - look at this, for Fiona's sake!), so now it's time to talk about the downright stunning and belly flutters-inducing new Mac Pro. As former owner and huge, huge, huge fan of the PowerMac G4 Cube - I haven't been this excited about an Apple product since, well, I would say the iMac G4. This is the Apple I used to love.
Apple held its big keynote event thing at WWDC earlier this evening, but since I was away with friends I've had to read up on it later in the evening. The company announced iOS 7, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and they gave a preview of the new Mac Pro. Especially the Mac Pro impressed me, and while iOS 7's new Holo/Metro-inspired theme looks messy and garish to me, I do commend Apple for finally breaking the mold. This news item will focus on iOS 7 - I'll dive into the Mac Pro and OS X 10.9 tomorrow (it's late here now).
And yes, the PRISM scandal is far, far from over. More and more information keeps leaking out, and the more gets out, the worse it gets. The companies involved have sent out official statements - often by mouth of their CEOs - and what's interesting is that not only are these official statements eerily similar to each other, using the same terms clearly designed by lawyers, they also directly contradict new reports from The New York Times. So, who is lying?This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.Ah, patents - the never-ending scourge of the technology industry. Whether wielded by companies who don't actually make any products, or large corporations who abuse them because they can't compete in the market place or because they're simply jerks, they do the industry a huge disservice and are simply plain dangerous. According to The Wall Street Journal (circumvention link), president Obama is about to take several executive actions to address patent trolls - which may seem like a good idea, but I am very worried that all this will do is strengthen the positions of notorious patent system abusers such as Apple and Microsoft.
With version 13.05, the developers of the Genode OS Framework take measures to ensure that Genode continues to scale well with a growing number of users and the steadily broadening platform coverage. Further highlights are the improved SoC support for Exynos 5, OMAP4, Raspberry Pi, i.MX, and new components for realizing headless systems.At the D11 conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook once again took the stage to be interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. While most of the interview can be replicated by picking and reading 10 random Apple fanblog stories - there were still a number of very interesting things that warrant some closer scrutiny.
So, the Xbox One disaster continues. Microsoft's policy for dealing with the used games market has reportedly leaked - and it's a clear and direct attack to destroy the used games market. Prices for used games will be set at the retail value of a new game, and retailers have to hook into Microsoft's computer systems and comply with Microsoft's terms and conditions.At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Member since:
2005-06-29
Well I've changed hardware since then so take that into consideration, but it seems to be much more stable and cohesive this time around. I know some of that is due to improvements to KDE as well, as only very recently I've been able to use that DE to get work done.
I'm definitely impressed though! I'm considering moving away from GNU/Linux on my workstation and vanilla FreeBSD is a pain to install and configure, so I jumped on the chance to try the new PC-BSD. For me, it's almost there. I also love the "True OS" server features; geeks.com has some nice server hardware on sale really cheap and I'm thinking of picking up a unit for bare metal to play around on. BSD is my first choice for a server OS.
Edit: Commenting via phone still sucks: P
Edited 2012-12-22 04:13 UTC