Does Desktop have a future on BSD?

IMHO Windows XP is still far better as a desktop system than modern Linux desktop. And BSD desktop is nothing but Linux desktop stack running on-top the BSD OS. Linux desktop is far more beautiful but I found myself to be more comfortable with the old guy. I think Windows XP is more a desktop than Linux desktop which I think more like a mobile phone. This is the reason I recommend Q4OS, it looks like the old XP. But being based on the old KDE3 fork TDE, it lacks many features of a modern Linux desktop environment. So if you can't live with such a limited environment, I recommend MX Linux, which is XFCE based. Both are rock stable.

BTW, most people I know running BSD as desktop usually use a WM but not a full DE.
 
also-ran said:
IMHO Windows XP is still far better as a desktop system than modern Linux desktop.
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I agree with this. It looked ugly as hell but the usability was there. I am certainly not an expert in UX (these days I suspect no-one is) but it always surprises me when people clone macOS rather than Windows ~2003 if they want usability.
 
kpedersen said:
I agree with this. It looked ugly as hell but the usability was there. I am certainly not an expert in UX (these days I suspect no-one is) but it always surprises me when people clone macOS rather than Windows ~2003 if they want usability.
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There is helloSystem as a macOS clone on-top of FreeBSD. I wonder if someone would take the patches from Q4OS to create a XP clone on-top of FreeBSD? XP still make me surprise about how stable and lightweight it is. It work beautifully on a very slow speed old HDD and use only about 100MB of ram on startup. What make me feel most comfortable when using XP is the font rendering, though. I think newer Windows really somehow lost the font rendering quality even though it's all ClearType after all. Anyway, I wonder if anyone on the FreeBSD desktop could beat XP's record of only 100MB of ram on startup? I think it should be some WM based but not a DE.
 
Windows XP... font rendering... good? Are you still on 720p screen?
kpedersen said:
I agree with this. It looked ugly as hell but the usability was there. I am certainly not an expert in UX (these days I suspect no-one is) but it always surprises me when people clone macOS rather than Windows ~2003 if they want usability.
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Windows XP usability - like the taskbar, where order of open programs are random (well, in order in which you opened your apps) and not same order for years where you pin an app and it stays there - like since 7 in Windows and since forever in macOS. Or start menu without search, without basic functionality like calculations, translations, definitions, indexed metadata in photos, emails, whatever, like in Spotlight Search?

Yea Windows XP usability was great, especially if you used wifi and bluetooth.
 
fryshke said:
Windows XP... font rendering... good? Are you still on 720p screen?
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I remember being at a convention where even Microsoft admitted that although the font rendering in Windows XP wasn't accurate, it was much preferred by users.

They even joked about it being a compromise between usability and keeping artists happy. They didn't quite know which route to take.

Surely you have noticed that the fonts are quite misshapen in Windows XP but they were absolutely crystal clear. Fonts in Vista and onwards have always been slightly blurry and clunky.

In the end they went with style over substance for the consumers.
 
Yes, and now we have normal crystal clear font rendering, and windows xp looks like garbage. It was fine in 2004, but that dude says windows xp rendering is superb in 2021. Which is completely true if you're using 720p or 1080p displays, because operating systems discarded this baggage in order to display fonts well on $ATLEAST_5_LAST_YEARS monitors.
 
kpedersen said:
Unfortunately in the industry hardware needs to last far longer than 5 years.

Plus, if you have ever used a server-class KVM Console, i.e:

https://www.startech.com/en-gb/server-management/rkcons1901

Notice the resolution to price ratio isn't great ;)
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Cool, I imagine the meeting where product managers were deciding font rendering:
- So, uh, guys, we'll obviously will make fonts look good for 99.999999999% users on day to day monitors, and not KVM console that amounts to 0.000000001% of usage, right?
- Duh...
- Yea no shit...
- ... yea?..
- Obviously...
- Why is this even a question?..

But sure, go ahead, put Windows XP in new POSes, ATMs, any other devices, because the font rendering looks good in our 50 cents 720p displays.
 
fryshke said:
- So, uh, guys, we'll obviously will make fonts look good for 99.999999999% users on day to day monitors, and not KVM console that amounts to 0.000000001% of usage, right?
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Exactly. Like I said. Microsoft went the consumer route.

Servers rarely need beautifully rendered fonts and technical users can pretty much make it however they want.

fryshke said:
But sure, go ahead, put Windows XP in new POSes, ATMs
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It is quite funny because they do. Exactly this. Probably not for the fonts specifically. Mostly due to the crap unportable Win32 software.
 
No, you said "although the font rendering in Windows XP wasn't accurate, it was much preferred by users." - users preferred Windows XP rendering, not current "blurry" fonts.
 
I've got 123 different fonts I downloaded from some 1000 free font site to use with graphics/gimp.

I extract them as root directly into /usr/local/share/fonts using x11-fm/xfe and never edit them into Xorg where they should go, black sheep that I be. The file manager will freeze once in a while so I kill it and start back up.

The fonts are readily available in Gimp and next time I open it and used one to make the "FreeBSD - The Daemons are no longer just in my head" wallpaper.

Yours, yes yours, Free as in Free FreeBSD Wallpapers.
 
Barney said:
Freebsd is great if you don't need to do anything, like build a touch application.
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You can build a touch application in FreeBSD as easily as any other operating system. I haven't done one for FreeBSD but I have for another OS.
In fact, anything you can create on Linux or Windows you can build on FreeBSD, too. Probably easier, also.
 
Hmm, then I wonder whether this little toy project of mine would work with "touch" on FreeBSD:
github.com

GitHub - Zirias/bigfingers

Contribute to Zirias/bigfingers development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

Seriously, I can't test, cause I don't have any device with a touch screen and FreeBSD installed on it. It DID work as expected on a Surface Book with Windows.
 
I'll have to trust you on that cause I really don't intend to buy anything with a touchscreen (except for a "smartphone" that probably won't ever run FreeBSD) myself ;)
 
Zirias said:
Hmm, then I wonder whether this little toy project of mine would work with "touch" on FreeBSD:
github.com

GitHub - Zirias/bigfingers

Contribute to Zirias/bigfingers development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

Seriously, I can't test, cause I don't have any device with a touch screen and FreeBSD installed on it. It DID work as expected on a Surface Book with Windows.
Click to expand...

Wayland's libinput() is installed and active by default on FBSD 12.2+.
So you can do this with practically any HDMI+USB touchscreen monitor.
Just a different API than the Windows one.
 
The latter is one reason why I avoid platform-specifc APIs whenever possible. This little toy code uses SDL to receive and process "touch events" ;)
 
Anyways, I don't think FreeBSD has a future on the desktop or on the server. Every year it's becoming less supported and rarely do new things even bother remembering FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is becoming a framework, a scaffold. You wouldn't write your own OS, so you take framework - FreeBSD - and build upon it. Build software, drivers that support your product and release. Like Playstation 5, like Switch, like iOS, like macOS, etc.
 
fryshke said:
Anyways, I don't think FreeBSD has a future on the desktop or on the server. Every year it's becoming less supported and rarely do new things even bother remembering FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is becoming a framework, a scaffold. You wouldn't write your own OS, so you take framework - FreeBSD - and build upon it. Build software, drivers that support your product and release. Like Playstation 5, like Switch, like iOS, like macOS, etc.
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It is time to be educated. I recall recently with the Threadripper 3xxx series processors, Linux having a bear of a time with compatibility, not even booting without tweaks and patches, but FreeBSD worked without any issue or needing any additional configuration right out of the box.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3990x-freebsd-bsd&num=1

Don't listen to FUD or hype, look at reality. FreeBSD "fell behind" in some areas, but has greatly caught up in most of those. FreeBSD never "fell behind" in other areas and continues to be a premier choice for some applications.
 
fryshke said:
Anyways, I don't think FreeBSD has a future on the desktop or on the server. Every year it's becoming less supported and rarely do new things even bother remembering FreeBSD.
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I hope you are wrong, but time will tell.

FreeBSD works well for me (as does OpenBSD, and some Linux).

If you are right, I hope you agree that it's a sad/bad thing that our platform choices are getting more and more limited. If you don't want Mac or Windows what are you going to be left with? Linux only. And then systemd. OpenSSL. Chrome. I think the world will be a poorer place with less choice. But I can appreciate it is becoming more and more difficult to support "everything" as an operating system provider - hardware and software - so you need more and more resource to keep up. Just like web browsers - there is so much expected in them that is becoming almost impossible to keep up and we seem to be ending up with three - Chrome, Firefox and Safari. And how much longer will Firefox survive?
 
fryshke said:
Anyways, I don't think FreeBSD has a future on the desktop or on the server. Every year it's becoming less supported and rarely do new things even bother remembering FreeBSD.
Click to expand...
If you don't think it has any future why you are using it and why you are here? Or you are here only to rant and actually not using it? Why don't just go with Linux since it's the ultimate operating system?
 
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