This release marks a milestone for PC-BSD, by moving to the latest FreeBSD 7-Stable and also incorporating the KDE 4.1.1 desktop. Users will immediately notice the improved visual interface that KDE 4.1.1 offers, as well as a large improvement in hardware support and speed from the update to FreeBSD 7-Stable. PC-BSD 7 also offers a large and growing library of self-contained PBI files available for installation, and improvments for other locales on our PBI Directory website. This release also offers new methods of installation, including a DVD, USB and Internet/network install. Note: Here is an interview with the lead developer of PC-BSD.
one of my favorite OSS projects out there. Keep up the great work guys. vserion 7 is a great update.
My favorite BSD distro too
http://digg.com/linux_unix/PC_BSD_7_Released
I’m looking at the download option and it’s only a 32bits OS? No x64 option or will it be available later?
What are the advantage of BSD over normal Linux distro like Kubuntu?
Here’s a link to its user guide:
http://docs.pcbsd.org/guide/
This will give you more idea about it.
Mostly just BSD kicks ass.
I use OpenBSD exclusively on a couple systems and dual boot OpenBSD on a couple others, but I gave up on Linux and have quit using it, already erased it from my main desktop system, but will try to answer.
BSD & Linux differences:
Each BSD is developed and maintained by its own group – kernal, filesystem, centralized ports, system libraries, instead of getting different parts from different people.
The BSDs are much more command line focused and is not interested in developing anything to be user friendly. People will help, but they do expect you try to be independent, they will not hold your hand every step of the way through.
In BSD you can upgrade to the new release from source, there is no need to erase it and install the new release
For a more thorough list, have a look here http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/explaining-bsd/comparing-bsd… Plus can just to a quick Linux BSD search for more list of differences
You make it sound as if BSD was only for expert and people who knows allot of stuff to begin with.
Funny, because on PC-BSD, the first thing you read is :
“PC-BSD is a free operating system with ease of use in mind. Like any modern system, you can listen to your favorite music, watch your movies, work with office documents and install your favorite applications with a setup wizard at a click.”
If this is true, it should be easier to use than a simple command line.
Don’t really see what OpenBSD has to do with the subject at hand – but it’s 01:30, I don’t feel like going to sleep, so I’ll bite…
Oh really?
Should I really count the number of non-OpenBSD packages in the OpenBSD ports tree?
Heck, do you have any idea how many GNU GPL packages are on your system right now?
… Oh, and since when did NIH syndrome became a virtue?
Which given the BSD distribution at hand (PC-BSD.. AKA BSD for the masses)… Oh, never mind.
Just like Slackware, Gentoo and at least 200 different Linux distributions… what else is new?
… Then again, no idea what this could be considered a winning feature. Necessity? Sure… but advantage?
Lets see.
Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, … [insert favorite distribution name here] … Slackware, Gentoo.
While I hate upgrading (both my Linux and my BSD boxes) – seldom did I see a distribution that doesn’t support previous-version upgrade.
Heck, most of them support automated-off-the-net upgrade.
So, you’re switching to FreeBSD, strait from your original OpenBSD comment, that had little to do with the actual subject. I’m impressed.
– Gilboa “Should I really point out that NetBSD != OpenBSD != FreeBSD?” Davara
Ok so thats all the negatives…any positives?
actually the only thing that would interest me from that list is the in-place upgrade -which debian (and derivatives) has been able to do for years now…and upgrading via binary packages is a hell of a lot quicker than upgrading from source…anyone have a spare couple of days while your pc compiles all your software?
i would think that linux sharing resources and libraries etc amongs all the various distros is a big plus since everyone contributes and everyone benefits.
each to their own – my answer to the kubuntu (or other linux distro) user is that if you’re happy with your linux distro and the direction linux is taking, then BSD will probably not be for you…
“The BSDs are much more command line focused and is not interested in developing anything to be user friendly. People will help, but they do expect you try to be independent, they will not hold your hand every step of the way through.”
uh, that’s PC-BSDs only purpose, to make FreeBSD user friendly. The BSds have all the same desktop environments as Linux, and most of the same capabilities. I used FreeBSD for a desktop for a few years, and while initial setup was a bit of work, it was the most stable desktop I have ever used. There is also excellent documentation.
As far as being more “command-line focused” once your DE is setup, it is no more “command-line focused” than Linux.
“In BSD you can upgrade to the new release from source, there is no need to erase it and install the new release ”
You can do that with Linux too, I recently when from Etch to Lenny.
That’s what I do since FreeBSD 4.0 without any problems. 🙂
An aspect worth mentioning. Unlike the most Linusi, the BSDs are documented very well. As a developer, this is of highest importance to me. Every part of the OS has a manual page: system tools, kernel interfaces, library calls, configuration files and maintenance operations. Most ports follow this good idea, except, “of course”, the big desktop environments (that don’t seem to have adequate offline documentation), sadly. Next to the offline material accessible via the man command and the doc/ subtrees, there’s the FreeBSD handbook and other interesting stuff. Most of this documentation can be applied to PC-BSD, because in fact it’s the same OS.
That’s correct. If you don’t want to use the CLI, you don’t have to. PC-BSD’s developers did a great job providing tools for nearly everything that can be done via CLI, such as upgrading the system, installing applications and configuring services. But if you’re a professional and work faster using the CLI, this option is still there.
Not so. There’s quite a bit of cross-pollination between the different BSD’s.
Eh, I dunno about that. In some ways yes, in some ways no. Most developers do use X, ya know.
I dont see how this is different from Linux.
I’m a fan of BSD and Linux but I have to tell you that it is way way easier to upgrade a linux install from one version to the next.. at least on Debian based distros.
You can actually update Dapper Drake directly to Hardy Heron.. a skip of about 3 years. On the other hand I’ve had to endure hours of ‘fun’ simply moving from FreeBSD 6.2 to 7.
Not trying to start a flame war, but I would like to defend the misconception that you cannot do in Linux what you can in BSD.
The amd64 release will be out shortly, according to Kris Moore.
I’ve never been too interested in the desktop BSDs, but I read an interesting article with Kris Moore recently, so I thought I’d give PC-BSD a try.
I’ve used PC-BSD 7 since beta 1 and have been impressed with the quality as well as the way Kris interacts with users and the speed with which bugs are addressed.
While PC-BSD 7 still has a couple of small warts, they are not serious issues and haven’t detracted from my overall experience. I think PC-BSD does for FreeBSD what Ubuntu does for Debian by making it more accessible to new users and the masses.
I decided this morning, after seeing the final release, to install PC-BSD on my laptop at work and see how things go for a few months. So far, I’m impressed; which is saying a lot since I’ve never been a fan of KDE.
I prefer Gnome over KDE, so I am not attracted to using BSD on the Desktop. Why are they all using KDE? Is it the same reason as Slackware??
Well, KDE had more users last time I saw any numbers, so if you want to chose one it seems sort of sensible. It’s also fairly simple to build – gnome is a tangled web of packages in comparison.
I guess the real answer is somewhere between those two and “personal preference of the leading people”.
I don’t know specifically, but there are two conflicting issues.
First, GNOME is the “GNU Network Object whatever”. BSD people hate GNU because the viral nature of the GPL license, generally incompetent coding of GNU software (of which not much remains in use, GLIBC is now developed by skilled developers from Red Hat, same for GCC). Still, BSD developed it’s own tar implementation, own readline, etc…
Second, BSD users prefer “stable” systems. Whatever that means, actually Linux is also very stable, however KDE crashed a lot for me, while GNOME never does. So the choice of KDE in this regard seems odd, but probably the GNU-hate wins.
Difficulty of building is not really an issue, GNOME does run fine on FreeBSD, there is a port and all. Also a freebsd gnome project.
About the KDE vs GNOME user count, it’s bullshit. Xandros or whoever singed deals with various governments for school PC preinstalled software, so theoretically 500 million schoolkids in Nigeria and Brazil use KDE or whatever. Umm… I have my doubts about them still choosing KDE if they had a choice, especially the translations of GNOME tend to be much higher quality (Except for German), and Qt has crappy handling for Asian scripts……
I don’t this BSD people hate GNU, it just isn’t their philosophy. The BSD license, in some cases more free than the GNU one, is often called a “rape me license”. BSD developers attempt to have a consistent base OS, related to this fact you mentioned:
They do this in order to get the base OS completely BSD licensable.
As well as in the Linux world, in the BSD world there are those who run servers for long time production where you cannot afford to toy around with sub-alpha releases of anything someone might be interested in. Instead, you pay attention to security updates of the OS and your applications and don’t touch anything else. Then, there are the enthusiasts who try the “bleeding edge” software. They are a big help to the developers bringing KDE 4 to a stable state.
Because I’m from Germany, I’m always very interested in the language quality of a KDE or Gnome translation. My experience is that Gnome’s translation is better than KDE’s. But most Germans won’t notice because we’ve got a high rate of c*ntional illitracy here. Germans are scared when they see an error message in KDE, especially when it’s in English.
Amen to that.
Even then, you have to be careful with updates and patches in production.
I speak a little Swiss [Deutch] so I can imagine some of the phrases.
It is not bullshit. At least not here in Brazil. For some strange reason that I cannot quite understand, Slackware – and thus, KDE – used to be very popular here on Brazil (based on what one can see on the Linux-related websites here) before Ubuntu came to rise in popularity.
The leading distros on Brazil – Mandriva and Kurumin – are all KDE based and the localization is for all practical intents and purposes a non-issue as Conectiva had done a heck of a good job already translating Linux to portuguese prior to the Mandriva acquisition. I would say that KDE probably enjoys a better localization here than GNOME.
Kurumin is so popular that has spawned a lot of spin-offs – itself being a Knoppix spin-off – and all of them KDE based. About the only time that we hear about GNOME is because of the Ubuntu hype and occasionally because of a local distro based on Debian called DreamLinux that kinda mixes GNOME’s with Mac looks and has been receiving some good reviews, including sites like Linux.com.
Ubuntu is huge where I work: pretty much everyone that I know that uses Linux likes it, except myself (more of a Debian/KDE person) and the odd Fluxbox user here and there. But every time that we see Linux making the headlines here as something intended to be used by the public at large, which is kinda rare still and I haven’t seem many personally, it seems to be a large KDE deployment – probably because of the Windows look-and-feel that people keep talking about.
If you believe what the fanboys say on Linux websites, you would be led to believe that everybody and their dogs are using Ubuntu here, as *buntu fanboys tend to be the loudest but make no mistake: it is not nearly as popular as people say it is. KDE probably still has the upper hand here but GNOME is rapidly getting there, due mostly to Ubuntu’s success.
Uhm, não é pertinente, mas acho que o português do Brasil é uma idioma mais legal..
Anyway, it’s interesting to me why do you prefer KDE over GNOME. I could stand most GUIs I used: classic MacOS, Windows 3.1 and 9x, OS/2, BeOS, QNX, Gtk/GNOME…
But, KDE feels horrible, it flickers and every app feels unfinished… Or rather, what is the problem of GNOME in your opinion?
PC-BSD is an interesting idea but I dislike the PBI system because I heard it doesn’t manage dependencies (potentially having multiple versions of the same library installed).
I might try it but here are the questions:
1) Is there a stable Flash 9 plug-in for FreeBSD Firefox? Can Mono Moonlight (Silverlight) plug-in be compiled for FreeBSD Firefox?
2) Are there native drivers for my Broadcom 4311-based WLAN?
3) Is there a GUI ports manager front-end instead of the PBI installer?
Edited 2008-09-16 01:37 UTC
Why not try it and see?
Because he has some good questions that deserve upfront answers before he wastes time messing with it.
So others have to do his investigative work for him?
Personally, I have no interest whatsoever in Moonlight or Mono, don’t have a Broadcom 4311-based WLAN card, and I tend not to use GUIs when there is a command line tool available (although I do believe there is one). I would imagine most people on OSNews fit into at least one of those categories (most likely the WLAN card).
In my opinion, the software is free, easily installed, and anybody can go to the site and read up on it to have these and any other questions answered, so I find it entirely unreasonable that the original poster would expect anybody else to do his investigative work for him.
There is a Flash 9 (Adobe) plugin, but it requires the Linux compatibility layer and the Linux version of Mozilla/Firefox in order to work. While this is no problem and is handled automatically by ports install, Flash 9 is still fairly unstable on FreeBSD.
Notice that PCBSD uses the swfdec library for Flash, which actually works fairly well for a fairly large subset of Flash out there (including Youtube, which is about my only reason to have Flash at all), but does not support some of the latest and most complex Flash movies.
This page (section 4.6.3) explains why there is not likely to be: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/compatibility-…
Some hardware companies who refuse to release specs are at least willing to make drivers for Linux, but very few are willing to bother with BSD support. Personally, for the reasons given, I avoid Broadcom devices when at all possible. FreeBSD supports a nice list of wireless devices: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.0R/hardware.html#WLAN
There are several, the most well-known being the DesktopBSD front end (/usr/ports/sysutils/desktopbsd-tools) ironically from PCBSD’s competitor, the DesktopBSD project ( http://www.desktopbsd.net ). However, the command-line tools for BSD ports are outstandingly simple to use and understand, especially if you install portsnap and portupgrade. Also, there is a whole section of ports for ports management software (/usr/ports/ports-mgmt/).
That page says that because Broadcom refuses to make documentation available, it is nearly impossible to write a driver. Nearly impossible is a different thing than completely impossible. Linux’s Broadcom 43xx driver was reverse engineered, is open source, and works quite well… all without Broadcom’s help. My notebook has a 4318 and has been well supported for 2+ years. Surely the hardest part of writing a FreeBSD driver has already been done by the Linux devs.
Edited 2008-09-16 04:09 UTC
There are 3 options for flash on FreeBSD. The linux flash7 plugin, gnash or swfdec, and wine + adobe flash. The first is limited and does not work well, with the audio and video frequently out of sync. The second would be my preferred option, except that too many resources are used and too many sites do not work with either gnash or swfdec. The third works very well, uses the same resources that flash9 uses on linux and seems quite acceptable.
The linux flash9 plugin is broken and has never worked, simply there for testing purposes, if any one ever bothers to try.
Installing a jvm could be much less annoying. I would like to manually download files from 3 separate sites instead of 4.
I had problems with the networking in FreeBSD7. Could not pinpoint the problem, but the symptom was wired or wireless interface losing or never establishing a connection. Random pain in the butt. The reason that FreeBSD is not installed on any of my systems right now, as I liked most everything else about it.
Edited 2008-09-16 03:34 UTC
Sorry, I miss placed the post
Edited 2008-09-16 07:26 UTC
I was planning to get a second hand laptop to try out some flavour of BSD.
OpenBSD actually but I think I will try this out instead.The screenie at distrowatch was very impressive.
My only worry is if it will have problems with the wi-fi card.
[fanboy]I’ve always had good luck with ThinkPads. They seem to run fairly generic hardware, or hardware that is FOSS OS friendly at least.[/fanboy
]
Wireless drivers are always a headache, but since you’re going second hand, finding a laptop with an Intel wireless chipset shouldn’t be too hard. I’ve included a link to the WLAN section of the FreeBSD 7.0 hardware notes to help you out.
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.0R/hardware.html#WLAN
The one piece of functionality which prevents PC-BSD, and FreeBSD for that matter, to be competitive in todays desktop market is more virtualization options.
As far as I know only QEMU/KQEMU is available on FreeBSD as a server. FreeBSD can be a client in a number of virtualization products, but only QEMU as a server.
This is one one feature that will put off many people to use PC-BSD.
Personally, I would love nothing more than to be able to use PC-BSD as my primary desktop, but virtualization is a must for me.
You might try Win4BSD.
I tried Win4BSD.
Crashed often and support became totally unresponsive.
Questions would go unanswered for months, if answered at all, on their support forums.
I wish someone like Ubuntu used something like PBI’s
As people say installing software on the Mac and in PC BSD is as easy as boiling water.
As with boiling water some people do have problems with it. But most dont.
Why not using PC-BSD itself, then?
1. Well for one I don’t like KDE 4
2. It’s not as stable as Ubuntu yet
3. The release schedule is not set as well.
4. Lack of drivers.
5. Poor laptop support (Ubuntu is bad enough)
6. Can’t get support as easy.
And there are a few other little things that need to be worked out.
After saying all that the guys that make PCBSD are great! They are doing a great job! I am not taking away from them at all! Most of the issues are common in BSD it’s self or is out of their control (Like KDE 4)
I think as it grows as with the Linux versions I like, I will revisit this over and over until I can use it for my everyday OS.
You can add KDE3 instead of KDE4 or even use GNOME PBI package … or from Ports.
Depends on hardware, you setup is propably supported.
Ubuntu scales my CPU 800-2000 while PC-BSD/FreeBSD 150-2000 (yes 150 not 1500) and in steps like 150/300/450… so which one is better here, but that also depends on laptop, laptop verndor etc.
But documantation is well written and complete so you will not need that support for most of the time, and even if you do, there are many bsd forums out there.
Problem is Gnome will not have modifications like KDE 4. Like on Ubuntu, there are tools and changes that are not in Gnome by default (Till they are rolled upstream if they ever are)
I have Acer 3680 laptop. Suspend and Hibernation don’t work with any version of PCBSD yet. Wireless is not even close. (But works out of the box on Ubuntu) This is what I mean by poor laptop support. Not the scaling of the CPU.
I don’t normally need support. But my grandmother, sister, god daughter etc may. And so it feels good to be able to not only point them to docs and forums but I can also get paid support.
I am not saying PCBSD is bad. What I am saying is if you compare to MacOSX then PCBSD would be 10.0 Cheetah and Ubuntu is 10.2 Jaguar
I would also like to see PC-BSD Gnome Edition with fully set up desktop like in Ubuntu, but developers focus on KDE, at least PBI exist. Maybe they will tweak it little more, but PC-BSD PBI tools will still remain in QT.
I have used 3 Dells and everything worked out of the box, but the less known manufanturer, the more problems.
What WIFI card ou have btw?
Suspend and Hibernation also does not work even on Linux on so many laptops, so its not as important IMHO, but its a nice feature.
You think that the fact that your grandmother can ask support wthat is wrong will help her?
By BSD documentation I do not mean forums, but official Handbook, Guide and FAQ which covers almost everything you need.
I expected a lot more handicapped comparasion
Regards
vermaden
Does VMware workstation or Virtualbox work in PCBSD 7?
I know BSD has jails, but I need to run more than one OS.
No.
As far as I know only QEMU works with FreeBSD.
I’ve used PC-BSD since before 1.0. I have used FBSD since 4.x (~1998) as my main development desktop. It’s really a great system with the PBI’s It works well. I wish there were more developers to quicken the pace a little but oh well. I installed FBSD/KDE4 a while back and was unimpressed with KDE4. So I went back to 3. As soon as the amd64 versions of PC-BSD are out I’ll try that.
Keep up the great work!
KRR
PS: I heard this a long time ago and it seems acurate for the people I work with FTMP. “Linux users use Linux because they don’t like MS, BSD users use BSD because they like UNIX!”
I was a pcbsd user, but it was 2 years ago, version 1.2. It was working OK for me, then I switched to Fedora, then went back to pcbsd, i think it was Da Vinci release. bad luck – lack of drivers for modern Dell workstation, issues with fonts, slow overall performance, couldn’t get the sound to work, neither the flash plugin, neither the microsoft fonts. didn’t have gaim ported, couldn’t install it from the ports, wasn’t able to have evolution with exchange connector installed, other mail clients don’t work for me, about 10 other small issues, which, turned out to be the final nail, and I gave up. I have no time to make the OS to work as it supposed to work – i just expect it to work. currently, i got stuck with opensuse 11.0 – ah, that’s different story
and a distro that doesn’t offer KDE 3.5.9 and/or kde 4.0 – like i said, no thanks, kde 4.0 is ugly, unusable, buggy and unstable. having in mind that i’m unix user since 1999, i couldn’t let this distro to break my habits, usually i don’t give up if a package won’t compile, i would redo the Makefile, or the respective flags in the configure script, would read the help / man pages, but this time they lost me. 1280 X 1024 screen resolution seemed impossible for pcbsd. No thanks.