This article isn’t meant to be technical. Instead, it offers a high-level view of what happened through the years with GhostBSD, where the project stands today, and where we want to take it next. As you may know, GhostBSD is a user-friendly desktop BSD operating system built with FreeBSD. Its mission is to deliver a simple, stable, and accessible desktop experience for users who want FreeBSD’s power without the complexity of manual setup. I started this journey as a non-technical user. I dreamed of a BSD that anyone could use.
↫ Eric Turgeon at the FreeBSD Foundation’s website
I’m very glad to see this article published on the website of the FreeBSD Foundation. I firmly believe that especially FreeBSD has all the components to become an excellent desktop alternative to desktop Linux distributions, especially now that the Linux world is moving fast with certain features and components not everyone likes. FreeBSD could serve as a valid alternative.
GhostBSD plays an important role in this. It offers not just an easily installable FreeBSD desktop, but also several tools to make managing such an installation easier, like in-house graphical user interfaces for managing Wi-Fi and other networks, backups, updates, installing software, and more. They also recently moved from UFS to ZFS, and intend to develop graphical tools to expose ZFS’s features to users.
GhostBSD can always use more contributors, so if you have the skills, interest, and time, do give it a go.
GhostBSD is the only BSD I was able to install without having to go through manuals, forums, or ChatGPT. That it uses sane desktops like MATE and XFCE is the cherry on top.
On the other hand, following vermaden’s freebsd install guide was one of the most satisfying Saturdays of my computing life.
It’s quite refreshing to know exactly every single driver and service that is loaded in your computer and exactly what each application is doing, how it is power throttling (and why) and know that there’s no bloat anywhere – it’s your setup, one that only does what you tell it to do.
Quite refreshing.
(And snappy and 5 hour battery life on a ThinkPad W530 with its original battery and 32GB of RAM)
I think glibc has a biffer impact on battery than people realize. My current Linux distro uses musl (with the mimalloc allocator) and my battery is lasting considerably longer than it did on EndeavourOS (glibc).
Same DE on both (Plasma 6) and same usage patterns / software.
I dailied PC-BSD when it was still a thing. If Ghost is as good as PC was, then it’s a fantastic OS. I’ve always preffered the BSD way of doing UNIX to the Linux way, just for sheer consistency and stability, so seeing a desktop oriented BSD still kicking is great news. PC-BSD was the only FOSS UNIX i ever used that didn’t make me want a lobotomy.
I knew that GhostBSD was Canadian but that Eric was a “french language speaker” was a surprise. He is from New Brunswick. Very cool.