Submitted by 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.
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.
It’s better than an hour with Vista.
*raise fist in anger* Yeah
Me goes back to playing WoW on Vista RC2.
Oh please. Are you trying to tell us that a Microsoft release candidate is better than UNIX software? If so, why and how do they balls it up for release?
Works for me. It’s you and the top poster that are having a crisis over petty things.
I can’t bring myself to rate the question of whether the world’s overwhelmingly most-used OS family actually works (let alone “works as advertised”) as “petty”.
If you do, then maybe that’s the reason you’re still using that shit.
I use Windows because it works for me. I would prefer IBM’s OS/2 but that isn’t a choice anymore. But what I can’t begin to comprehend why you’re so emotionaly invested in Windows. It’s just software like IBM’s AIX and Apple’s MacOS X. Obsessions aren’t healthy, man.
But what I can’t begin to comprehend why you’re so emotionaly invested in Windows
Erm, the whole point is that I’m NOT “emotionally invested” in Windows.
It’s just software like IBM’s AIX and Apple’s MacOS X.
AIX and MacOS are neither crap nor ubiquitous.
But what I can’t begin to comprehend why you’re so emotionaly invested in Windows
But you are emotional invested in Windows. After all, you ramble constantly about it. And that displays your obsession with Windows.
AIX and MacOS are neither crap nor ubiquitous.
Windows is quality software. In fact, it’s higher quality software than it’s competitors.
Windows is quality software. In fact, it’s higher quality software than it’s competitors.
I got a good laugh with that one – thanks a lot!
Do you gain some sadistic pleasure in bashing Microsoft?
This was an article about PC-BSD. If you want to compare PC-BSD with Vista then bring about a decent comparison- feature, usability wise. What is the fun of simply badmouthing Vista?
I am no MS loyalist. I work mostly on Ubuntu/Arch, but if something from MS is good enough, I am man enough to appritiate it.
A constructive critisism is welcome, however, immature comments like the above, demean the entire thought.
“Do you gain some sadistic pleasure in bashing Microsoft?”
Yes!
I am forced to administer a few Windows servers at my place of employment. Out of thirty-five or so boxes, being FreeBSD, a couple are still Windows. I spend more time on two or three boxes than I do the rest of the network combined. MS costs me my freetime, my weekends and a butt-load of overtime I will never, ever get compensated for. Just last Wednesday I had to fiddle and handhold the list of “critical” patches that needed to be applied to these servers, if you could call them that. This doesn’t even speak to the desktops – we have another poor sole that has that to deal with. Then I’ve got all the spam to deal with from spewing, compromised, MS workstations that fill the wire with horribly chatty protocols (smb).
Does it make me feel good? Yes. Is it satisfying? No, not until MS is outlawed for server use. Now I have Microsoft reps. calling daily about how/when we plan for a Vista migration? Yes, I’m angry.
I think I hear your bot-master calling.
There’s something wrong with you. I manage Linux and Windows servers. Linux servers are fast to manage because of automation but it takes time in the beginning to learn and to get used. But Windows 2003 servers are a piece of cake to manage. I don’t know why you have so many problems. As long as you have proper firewall settings, antivirus, and everything automated to update security patches and antivirus, you really shouldn’t have any problem with Windows servers. To tell you the truth, I’m really surprised when I read you. It’s easy to critisize Microsoft (sorry, I mean MS) for their lack of security, but I don’t think they chose to have an unsecure system. Who would?
“but I don’t think they chose to have an unsecure system.”
Yes they did!
Whom is responsible for writing the code?
C’mon, then all software vendors decided to write buggy applications just because their developers left bugs here and there. Nonesense. Why would Microsoft spend millions of dollars spreading the idea that Windows is more secure than Linux if they decided to make it unsecure then?
I’m not saying it’s intentional, there is so much bloat that they can’t maintain the code to any degree of quality.
This IS their responsibility, period.
Ah yes of course. They’re responsible but it’s not intentional. They wrote their own code.
Microsoft’s Vista marketing campaign reads “the most secure version of Windows ever produced” – it does not compare security.
You must have been one of those people who actually bought a Betamax.
It’s because (s)he’s managing Windows 3.1/DOS servers. Don’t blame him. Doing all those old LanManager commands all the time. I’d be royally pissed too.
….I don’t think they chose to have an unsecure system. Who would?
I think, in a way, that they did. Windows networking is essentially promiscuous (this is not meant to be derogatory, but I cannot think of a better descriptive word) in that it, by design, will talk to anybody, easily.
The upside is that networking is relatively easy to set up, in accordance with MS general concept. The downside is that it tends to weaken security.
It’s easy to critisize Microsoft (sorry, I mean MS) for their lack of security, but I don’t think they chose to have an unsecure system. Who would?
Yes they did. They chose to integrate IE into the sytem, they chose to invent ActiveX, and they chose to have several different ports open to the outside world by default.
..no problem. I upgraded the VMware image of PCBSD 1.2 to 1.3.0.1 today and it went smoothly, didn’t even have to delete X session files as I read in the PCBSD forum.
One thing I noticed though, the default settings for KDE are a bit too much for the VMware environment. After turning off animation settings and a few more items, KDE was much snappier with 256 MB RAM.
I also get the same good feeling from this distro as I got when I tried Ubuntu 6.06 for the first time, it has the easy for users feel to it.
of 1.3 at LQ
http://shots.linuxquestions.org/?linux_distribution_sm=PC-BSD%2…
I’ve used pcbsd over the last two days and I’m impressed with the performance in vmware player. I have an idle pII 350. With enough Ram I think it will run pretty well. I’ll let you guys know.
ps. It always amuses me when I see a discussion of testing a distro on a low-end machine, and machine chosen is faster than 1gz
…a low-end machine, and machine chosen is faster than 1gz
Agreed – but what can you call it? It’s certainly not “top-end”, and not “bottom-end”, and “middle-end” is nonsense
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.
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???)
Instead whining, try just another server.
-> man portsnap
Instead whining, try just another server.
I prefer csup with fastest_cvsup:
# to run it make it executable or
# launch: # sh /root/ports.update
csup -h $(fastest_cvsup -q -c us,de,no,se,et,ru,it,ca,au,uk,fr,fi,pl ) /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile
Same way we can update FreeBSD source code
# to run it make it executable or
# launch: # sh /root/standard.update
csup -h $(fastest_cvsup -q -c us,de,no,se,et,ru,it,ca,au,uk,fr,fi,pl ) /usr/share/examples/cvsup/standard-supfile
These lines should be unwrapped- can`t do that on this page.
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.).
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…
You mean we should test new (alpha) features on our users?
Absolutely not. I talked about helping new features reach maturity faster. I didn’t say you should dump new, untested features on your userbase in RELEASE – I refered to beta testing. Xorg is a good example: since 6.9 is well tested, you could try build it as per instructions on wikitest, and release 1.3 alpha, beta, etc. with that. If it doesn’t work, you could have switched back to 6.9 for the RCs.
If you think that we (PC-BSD Team) is sitting in cave and waiting for ports appear then you are wrong-
That is exactly how it looks like from the outside.
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…
Of course you know about it – I didn’t say you don’t know about it. I said that your claim that “PC-BSD is first to use latest KDE and various technologies that is never used on FreeBSD” is patently false. It is an overstatement. Exaggeration. And nothing you said disproves this. PC-BSD helps FreeBSD through exposing its desktop capabilities – but it is definitely not “first to use latest KDE and various technologies.” You are dishonest if you claim otherwise. I never saw anything appear in PC-BSD before it was available in the official ports tree – nothing!
What I would like to see is more active participation in testing. Release early, release often, and include new technologies in alpha/beta releases (again, not in final versions!). Build new technologies with debug symbols, and provide users with the means to help file intelligent bug reports – that’s what the project needs, and that is what, contrary to your claims, I haven’t seen coming from PC-BSD. Or care to point out your bugreports/patches that helped stabilize HALd, Xorg, or any new technology?
I said that your claim that “PC-BSD is first to use latest KDE and various technologies that is never used on FreeBSD” is patently false. It is an overstatement. Exaggeration. And nothing you said disproves this. PC-BSD helps FreeBSD through exposing its desktop capabilities – but it is definitely not “first to use latest KDE and various technologies.” You are dishonest if you claim otherwise. I never saw anything appear in PC-BSD before it was available in the official ports tree – nothing!
Because you are not PC-BSD developer- that’s why.
I was unpleasantly surprised that KDE FreeBSD team decided to release KDE 3.5.5 in ports- it is buggiest release ever- we had really hard time to fix it and make at least somewhat usable- all our mounting scripts are useless with this release (kioslave was broken)- only solution was to enable that damn HALD (don’t work as advertised because of FreeBSD USB bugs).
SHOW ME OTHER FREEBSD DISTRIBUTION THAT IS USING KDE 3.5.5 RIGHT NOW!
/me closes ThinkPad lid- I am sick of this shit already…
Because you are not PC-BSD developer- that’s why.
Nice attitude there
I’ve been a PC-BSD user and a contributor (PBIs) – time doesn’t allow me to continue, but I’m very much a fan of the project (see my list of recommended articles here on osnews).
only solution was to enable that damn HALD (don’t work as advertised because of FreeBSD USB bugs).
And you call yourself a developer? Perhaps you should have taken a look at the Makefile of kdebase – HALd support is not only optional, but off by default. You could easily avoid using HALd and continue to use your own scripts. But therein lies the dilemma: actually, switching to HALd means more testing, and more contributions… Oh wait… Instead of working with FreeBSD to fix the problems, you keep bitching about FreeBSD USB bugs, HALd disaster, etc. Have you tried the new, GIANT-less usb stack of HSP? Did you try to contact him, offering some testing/asking for help (realeasing a more up to date driver for 6.x)?
I know PC-BSD developers, and the tremendous work they put into polishing this distribution. You don’t help their reputation with your attitude, or your display of ignorance.
Nice attitude there
I’ve been a PC-BSD user and a contributor (PBIs) – time doesn’t allow me to continue, but I’m very much a fan of the project (see my list of recommended articles here on osnews).
Ah, that’s why you call me a liar and such?
And you call yourself a developer?
I am doing guality assurance in PC-BSD. I didn’t know you are pythoness and know what bugreports I file, what backtraces I post, what mailinglists I am reading/posting, what bugfixes I commit….
Before throwing any accusation on me you should calm down and think what are you doing.
Just to make it clear: I don’t have a problem with the way PC-BSD is developed. It just proves how good FreeBSD’s architecture is: for instance, switching from 6.1 to 6.2 takes a few hours’ work, and you can have an update ready in no time. Similarly, when KDE 3.5.5 was released to ports, it took only a few days to upgrade PC-BSD to use it. My gripe is with your statement that “PC-BSD is first to use latest KDE and various technologies that is never used on FreeBSD.” Again, HALd is a good example: it has been supported on FreeBSD for some time now, but KDE support only arrived with 3.5.5. Until then, PC-BSD used a homegrown system to detect attached media, and switched to HALd only after it became available with KDE when the port was upgraded – and then you began bitching about the “HALd disaster”… you and others like this user: http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=16907&comment_id=200540
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=16847&comment_id=197690
You did nothing to avoid that disaster by helping the KDE@freebsd team to solve them – which again, is not a problem in itself. I don’t expect you to do that – unless you make claims about the tremendous contributions you provide to the FreeBSD project.
I tried v1.3.0.1 but during the hardware detection, it hung up after:
acd0:dvdr at ata0-master udma33
I can get Freesbie 2.0 RC1 to boot so why can’t I install PC-BSD?
/*I can get Freesbie 2.0 RC1 to boot so why can’t I install PC-BSD? */
don’t worry and don’t start thinking it’s your system. the truth is pc-bsd is full of bugs that were not fix before they release it. And the sad part is they took a really stable os freebsd and turn it a total piece of c**p. even the author pionts out the system is not stable and then lists all the things that are wrong with pc-bsd.
Look, until you know how to read and follow instructions then please stick with Windows! You’ll make yourself look a lot less like an idiot, believe me. Windows does exactly what you want, you can watch your favorite vidoes on youtube.com and listen to your ripped CD’s. Why try something that may actually cause you to think … right! I’m not knocking Windows, it works as advertised. And many, many folks need not venture outside of that pretty UI until you know a little more about an OS.
Here endth the rant, thanks for listening.
I’ve installed PcBSD with the intention of using it as a desktop for occassional purposes and especially as for using it as a fileserver in a Windows/OSX network.
From default install, I’ve had some serious problems trying to figure out a couple of things. Help would be appreciated.
1. AFAICT PcBsd only installs Samba as in use for browsing others fileshares, not sharing my own? is this a correct assumption? How do I then simplest get Samba with the possibility to share files. Checked PBIs and can’t find it.
2. My other boxes on the network can’t “see” the PcBSD machine as default. odd for a default install desktop machine, how do I fix this?
3. For using as a fileserver, what would be the recommended path to store these files? in /mnt?
In my world, I’d love to see even this simplified, as in having an option during install for purpose, such as “fileserver” and just have it set it up for me.
not to mention that the PBI with Pamp (apache yadi yadi) didn’t work either. It runs it, and then says check Localhost, but nothing happens there.
Em .. where did you read that PCBSD’s main mission is file server ? Or maybe kUbuntu can do it on form you described ?
How you want to ‘see’ that box ? You tried to ping it ?
It’s a user-fierndly no brain-less.
Edited 2007-01-14 08:41
1. AFAICT PcBsd only installs Samba as in use for browsing others fileshares, not sharing my own? is this a correct assumption? How do I then simplest get Samba with the possibility to share files. Checked PBIs and can’t find it.
Sry, I tightened PC-BSD firewall up maybe too much, but had to find compromise between users who use it directly connected to internet and users who are behind nat. I’d recommend you to disable PF firewall if you are using internet behind NAT and want to communicate with other computers in LAN.
2. My other boxes on the network can’t “see” the PcBSD machine as default. odd for a default install desktop machine, how do I fix this?
This is firewall problem, look my previous answer. We have firewall GUI in our roadmap for next release, then you can set up your own featured PF firewall.
3. For using as a fileserver, what would be the recommended path to store these files? in /mnt?
It depends- usually all user files are stored in /usr/local like /usr/local/www for apache. You can of course put all files into /usr/home/share, /home is a link to /usr/home acctually.
In my world, I’d love to see even this simplified, as in having an option during install for purpose, such as “fileserver” and just have it set it up for me.
This is our goal, right now we had no time to deal with server related enhancements yet and looking for various configuration mechanisms like web based configuration or remote desktop with GUI tools. FreeBSD got so much features for servers that it is really hard to pick up couple of them that would be suitable for most of the users. Any ideas are welcome.
Thanks for answers, will see if I can sort this disabling thing out =).
As an idea for what “server features” that I’m sure would be welcome is for starters File server. For Small businesses with anything from 2 – 20 employees, this is a costly thing and shouldn’t have to be. Especially as having an IT guy employed is far to much cost, and Windows licensing to expensive for their server stuff.
The second thing that hits me is the “Pamp” thingie. As in Webserverinstall. Just get it setup with MySQL or Firebird or PG (would be lovely to choose in setup) and get Apache up, PHP and in the best of worlds Java.
Third install would be CRM server install. Take for instance, SugarCRM and have it installed and setup. Would be lovely.
For many, the same box would be able to handle all these tasks, but the daunting thing is setting it up, and still 95% of these installs are almost identical which is why I find it odd to make it such a hazzle to fix this.
but, to make sure I don’t sound like someone complaining far to much. PCBSD have done great strides so far to simplify things in the unix world!