Bsd os

[christophe]

Hi witek,

ok, I'll see to use. Meanwhile, it takes a long, very long time to load after boot. Must say it is rather heavy compared to Salix.

[chakuari]

Hi. I tried FreeBSD, once. Just installed it, no way of adding programs without banging my head against the wall and ruining the system. #fail

Then I switched to PC-BSD. Nice, really, but heavy and slow. I don't like KDE very much, even if I admit it's not that bad in itself. I just prefer lighter desktops. But I had problems with my wifi card, which is not recognised, and with the printer, not properly recognised. Moreover, I tried version 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2, which still had only KDE (the upcoming 9.0 will have also other DEs to choose from, instead of installing two of them one on top of the other) and most of all the problem of the numerous copies of the same libraries in order for the programs to run. Version 9 should fix that, but now I'm too happy with Linux to try In ANY case, PC-BSD people are very, very kind to newcomers, even prone to guide you even with noob questions, in the forum and also on IRC. #thumbsup

I also tried NetBSD, version 5.0.1. It installed like a charm and it's really fast (well, I use only OpenBox + tint2 on it). I like it very much, but it has a lot of problems with the pre-compiled packages: too many of them have conflicts not easily solved (Linux world is simpler, in this), and are older. Finally, the same wifi problem.

Weren't it for Salix, I'd probably stay with NetBSD, even if PC-BSD promises to be much better with version 9 and may be worth a try. My suggestion is to try BSD, possibly in more than one flavour, and then decide.

Good luck!

P.S.: how is DesktopBSD? Is is simple to update/upgrade?

[jayseye]

The latest FreeBSD 9 Release Candidate 1 finally supports updating from prior versions of FreeBSD. That includes the ability to update from any of the recent Beta versions, which lacked an upgrade path until now.

Also, binary packages are now available for CPUs other than x86 so, for instance, old PowerPC Macs can be updated to run a modern OS and popular apps. Up 'til now, running even basic apps on PowerPC required compiling from source under the FreeBSD 9 Betas.

The new installer, PC-sysinstall, was adapted from PC-BSD so now even mere mortals can install FreeBSD from scratch -- at least on x86. I'll be testing that installer soon on a very old Mac Mini, and still expect that manual partitioning will be required for PowerPC.

[GJones]

I've tried BSDs on several occasions...

I'll admit I love the package management, and the speed and simplicity of the OS. (A minimal FreeBSD system uses about half as much RAM as a minimal Linux one.) But the hardware support just kills it. FreeBSD and NetBSD don't even support ACPI on many machines - which sucks on laptops, since you can't tell your battery's charge level without it.

OpenBSD is probably the best I've tried in terms of hardware support, but it has other problems... Like the automount daemon requiring the user to know regular expressions (WTH?). I realize pmount is far from an ideal solution for mounting stuff (suid binary and all), but there has to be a better way than this. (And no, FreeBSD's automounter scripts doesn't count either. Automount daemons like amd and AutoFS generally suck for local stuff, as polling the mounted filesystem for new files will prevent it from ever unmounting.)

Really it's rather annoying that BSD hardware support and usability are so bad, because Linux is (IMO) getting needlessly complex at the moment. See consolekit, polkit, systemd, etc. The new stuff looks good in theory; in practice parts of it are breaking all the time, and the documentation required to fix it is almost invariably missing.

[/mildly OT rant]

[Wanderer]

That's it ! I finally managed to install a BSD system (pcbsd).
Emotion is such that I have tears in my eyes...
Think, since the time I try.

For those interested, the problem was well on my hardware.
Apparently, unlike other os, BSD is very sensitive to the way which the DVD players are installed. A simple physical reversal of my 2 players solve the problem.

Spread the word!

I know this is dated, but I had a similar problem with, dual burners and both set as master when one should have been the slave.

[crocusino]

I also tried NetBSD, version 5.0.1. It installed like a charm and it's really fast (well, I use only OpenBox + tint2 on it). I like it very much, but it has a lot of problems with the pre-compiled packages: too many of them have conflicts not easily solved (Linux world is simpler, in this), and are older. Finally, the same wifi problem.

Weren't it for Salix, I'd probably stay with NetBSD, even if PC-BSD promises to be much better with version 9 and may be worth a try. My suggestion is to try BSD, possibly in more than one flavour, and then decide.

NetBSD is nice - small, fast and reliable (well, I don't mean if you plug out a USB stick...) The downside is - of course - the HW support, which is due to the lack of developers. I compiled all packages from sources and don't remember of any crash. Some packages are broken (i.e. don't build), but it is again due to the relatively small user community.

Anyway I still use (and also I am going to use in the far future) its multiplatform package system with ports for about 10k packages (http://pkgsrc.org). If sth is missing in Salix, I can install it from pkgsrc easily.

[Timmy!]

FreeBSD touchy? Not for desktops? A pain? What?

Yes, FreeBSD does not support all of the hardware that Linux supports. However, it should run on a majority of older systems with little or no problems. If you have new(er) hardware, a little research goes a long way. It might also save you a bad experience.

I have been running FreeBSD for almost two years on an older Dell Dimension desktop with a 500mhz pIII and 256mb of RAM. It is primarily used for storage and running daemons, but has been configured to run KDM at boot (and runs KDE3 very well). All of the hardware works out of the box. The only reason for me to recompile the kernel is to add quota support. It has Linux emulation, based on Fedora, which allows you to build/run stuff not supported natively (eg: Flash). The ports system is very easy to use, handles most dependencies automatically, and you can even install most software pre-compiled using the 'pkg_add' command.

Is FreeBSD for everyone? No, but neither is Linux. If you're a gamer you'll probably be disappointed. If you need proprietary drivers for your hardware, again, you're probably going to be disappointed. If you don't like "Linux software" (as most n00bs call it), stay away. FreeBSD uses all the same stuff. If you're happy using Linux, why switch? In all honesty, on the user level, you're not going to notice any difference between a good Linux distro (like Slackware) and FreeBSD.

I installed FreeBSD for something to do, and because I had an extra computer to play with. I am very happy with it. Upgrading from one release to the next is simple using 'freebsd-upgrade', so there is really no reason to do a clean install. It is not any "more touchy" than Linux. If you do mess something up, the recovery option available on your install disc will probably be able get you back into the system.

A lot of the stuff being said in this thread is being said because of inexperience, not because it's the truth. In a lot of ways, it's just like the non-sense openSUSE, Ubuntu, and Mint users say about Slackware. "It's too hard".

Edit: FreeBSD-9.0rc3 (default kernel) running KDE 3.5.10 on a Dell Dimension 5000 desktop.

By the way, I do not have any of the problems with hotplugging mentioned in this thread. Memory sticks, cell phones, iPods, mice and keyboards have all worked as they would under Linux.