GhostBSD jumps ship; Drops FreeBSD to use TrueOS (PC-BSD)

sko said:
I absolutely don't give a damn about 1-2sec faster boot times (which are neglegible when using SSDs or NVMEs anyways), but startup needs to be 100% reliable, which those "dynamic" inits still can't provide for a lot of use cases...
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This. When you have a system with uptimes of at least 24 hours, whats a few extra secs waiting? Heck I even go and bump the timeout in the bootloader back to 10 secs so I have enough time to get my old brain and fingers into action. Yes, I still use a desktop not a laptop.

Laptops: reliable suspend and resume, not "faster boot times".

I don't have an issue with beginners/newcomers/call them what you will being confused or overwhelmed. I think we were all there at some point, but maybe just a long time ago that we've forgotten the frustration.

I think the basic problem is expectations from doing a default install. I'd guess that one could easily tweak install scripts to do a lot more (heck plenty of examples around, Michael W Lucas has them in a few of his books), to do a lot of the things that are talked about in this thread. It would make it easier for a beginner to get to a functioning graphical desktop, but would it enhance their understanding of the system?
Trihexagonal guide to setting things up (vermaden also has a good series) is a bit more "I'm not going to hold your hand, but I'm going to try and give you what you need and what you can use to start figuring out things on your own".

The old "give a man a fish" vs "teach a man to fish" principle.

X configuration and use has improved drastically over the years. The biggest issue is when you have different video devices in the system; config get a bit manual.
For a single device system, my experience:
Intel graphics supported by the i915 driver, simply install drm-kmod, run startx and it just works.
Nivida devices: simply install the appropriate nvidia-driver (this can get tricky with older devices), create a minimal "driver-nvidia.conf" to tell X to load the nvidia driver (otherwise you wind up with default VESA modes). You can search this forum and find plenty of info, but here is all I needed to do:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-nvidia.conf (could also go in /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d)
Section "Device" Identifier "NVIDIA Card" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" Driver "nvidia" EndSection
That's it, nothing more.

Installing and configuring your desired graphical login manager and desktop environment is simply pkg install FOO and following any messages.
 
Jörg Preiß said:
MidnightBSD installs DE, but has no package manager. Tried to compile chromium, but failed...
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MidnightBSD is a joke. It's a FreeBSD fork (unlike GhostBSD which is a custom desktop system built on FreeBSD) supposed to "include all the software you'd expect for your daily tasks", yet it has much less packages available than FreeBSD, and most of them are heavily outdated (I'll just mention Firefox 80 as an example, have a look at http://www.midnightbsd.org/ftp/MidnightBSD/mports/packages/amd64/2.0/ for more...).

Jörg Preiß said:
If FreeBSD is ment as a server/console only system, and another one is the OS for the 'lazy' people - perfect.
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To compare to the penguins world, think of FreeBSD like of Arch Linux: you can make it whatever you want, but you have to do it yourself.
 
bsduck said:
To compare to the penguins world, think of FreeBSD like of Arch Linux: you can make it whatever you want, but you have to do it yourself.
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That's not really a good analgon given the fact that Arch Linux is a rolling release distribution, where your packages are always cutting edge, while FreeBSD has a fixed release cycle.

A much better counterpart in the Linux world for comparison is Debian.
 
hardworkingnewbie said:
That's not really a good analgon given the fact that Arch Linux is a rolling release distribution, where your packages are always cutting edge, while FreeBSD has a fixed release cycle.
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Ports/packages are not tied to specific releases. Only the base OS has a fixed release schedule but only for the -RELEASE versions, -STABLE and -CURRENT are constantly moving.
 
hardworkingnewbie said:
That's not really a good analgon given the fact that Arch Linux is a rolling release distribution, where your packages are always cutting edge, while FreeBSD has a fixed release cycle.
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That's true, but I couldn't think of a Linux distribution which is both "do-it-yourself" and fixed release.

Debian is not a good analog either because:
1. you can install a fully featured desktop from its installer
2. all packages are fixed release, while we get regularly updated packages on a fixed release base system
 
bsduck said:
Debian is not a good analog either because:
1. you can install a fully featured desktop from its installer
2. all packages are fixed release, while we get regularly updated packages on a fixed release base system
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If you get the DVD iso, you do have X11 and desktop environments on that media. The old sysinstall installer also used to allow you to install it during setup.

FreeBSD is only using "quarterly" packages by default. You can easily change that to "release_1", "release_2", etc.

Yes, these are not by default but still very easy things to change in order to emulate something like Debian.

Did GhostBSD ever jump back to upstream FreeBSD when TrueOS was discontinued. This is a little why these desktop oriented spins are not quite so reliable. History seems to keep repeating itself and the newer users never quite realise.
 
Jörg Preiß said:
Don't know if it helps when an absolute Newbie adds his 5 pence, but anyway: I try out BSD from time to time. My target is to browse the net, develop some stuff, maybe some TeX... delopment is in .NET core, Python or Qt, a little bit Docker - so no low hanging fruits here. But I'd like to give it a try.
I'm coming from Linux, started With SuSE 5.3, currently on Ubuntu, Fedora, MX Linux. So in principle, I know how to start with X11 from scratch - but I do not have the time for it anymore. I am used to select my DE, reboot, and got it. I have a script, which installs all needed packages, depending on the OS, so after 3h or less, I have my running system.
When I try this with FreeBSD, as I did yesterday, I start with a 'startx: command not found'. I tried to install X11 manually, but then it has no configuration...
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Not sure why you need to make your life difficult. If you don't have the time or interest to configure a FreeBSD desktop manually, have it done for you automatically. desktop-installer is available in Ports (and I assume as a package), it does all that for you and installs the DE of your choice.
Please note that I have only installed Mate and XFCE with it, so I do not know how well it does other DEs - there is plenty of choices. But for those two, it worked 100% in giving me a working desktop environment.
 
kpedersen said:
If you get the DVD iso, you do have X11 and desktop environments on that media. The old sysinstall installer also used to allow you to install it during setup.
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It's not just a matter of having the packages available on the media. To get a comfortable working environment you'll still have to configure a few things (locale, devfs...), load required services and video drivers, install a display manager, and so on. Debian does all of this automatically. You just boot the installer, choose your language/keyboard, select "KDE Plasma desktop", wait, reboot, and SDDM is there to log you to a ready to use desktop. I don't say it's better, it's just not comparable. There's more automation in Debian.

kpedersen said:
FreeBSD is only using "quarterly" packages by default. You can easily change that to "release_1", "release_2", etc.
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Fortunately quarterly packages are much more up to date than Debian stable.
Four version upgrades in a year is much better for average desktop software than one upgrade every two years!
 
SirDice said:
Ports/packages are not tied to specific releases.
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Hmmmm... Actually, they are.... There's always some concern about breaking the ABI for some of the packages when upgrading from say, 11-RELEASE to 13-RELEASE. Isn't this why we have release-targeted repos?
 
bsduck said:
There's more automation in Debian.
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That is exactly the point and what things like PC-BSD, TrueOS, Trident, GhostBSD all tried to increase the level of automation.

But what does that all mean for a FreeBSD install? The default installer does a level of preconfiguration (time zone, network stuff), but obviously not enough to create a usable desktop by default.

Expectations and documentation. Get the required level of automation wrapped up into a port, then it becomes trivial and easy to document:
To install one of the common desktop environments, on the initial reboot after the installer has finished do a "pkg install foo" and follow the instructions in the package message.
 
mer said:
The default installer does a level of preconfiguration (time zone, network stuff), but obviously not enough to create a usable desktop by default.
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Installing FreeBSD requires using the command line to configure a lot of things. That's not just a waste of time, it's a good learning experience. It is IMO the best way to really get to know your system.
I see people sometimes who need a DE and 6 file managers just to get their disks mounted. In the end, the learning experience might have saved 'em more time than the auto-installer did.
 
Tieks said:
Installing FreeBSD requires using the command line to configure a lot of things. That's not just a waste of time, it's a good learning experience. It is IMO the best way to really get to know your system.
I see people sometimes who need a DE and 6 file managers just to get their disks mounted. In the end, the learning experience might have saved 'em more time than the auto-installer did.
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I'm not disagreeing with any of this, in fact, I whole heartedly endorse all of it, mostly because I've been doing it that way for a long time.

That's my biggest issue with Windows: which GUI and how many clicks do I need to configure or even look up something.
 
mer said:
I'm not disagreeing with any of this, in fact, I whole heartedly endorse all of it, mostly because I've been doing it that way for a long time.

That's my biggest issue with Windows: which GUI and how many clicks do I need to configure or even look up something.
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Command line in Windows is next to impossible: Even if you get the syntax correct, "effective permissions" will most likely be the culprit behind the unintelligible error message that comes from the failure. In Windows, using a GUI sometimes helps the matters. One use case would be cleaning out Windows.old after an upgrade: It's faster to use the Disk Management GUI than to do del Windows.old in PowerShell, and discovering you don't have the perms to delete a tiny file buried 25 levels deep.
 
Beastie7 said:
No mere mortal is going to go through this,
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I have previously stated I may have overestimated "mere mortals" in innate ability.

It started out as notes to myself so I wouldn't forget how to do it while offline a year and not using those skills daily.

Beastie7 said:
then maintain the hassle of all the CLI based post-mortem configuration and tuning.
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I explain step-by-step in excruciating detail how to use the command line with a target audience of a Windows user who has never used it

I walk them through the process start to finish, show them what System and Security files need editing once they hit the desktop with examples provided, a pf firewall ruleset for general purpose use in addition to a CUPS version and endow them with valuable CLI experience as they work.

The term postmortem Latin for "an examination carried out after death" and use of it incorrect in this instance.

Beastie7 said:
I can attest to that.
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Don't sell yourself short. You're still here, aren't you?

Beastie7 said:
My Mac works like an appliance by default, while providing a decent terminal emulator for Unix programming/administration (and apps!).
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Are they the apps that came installed and learned to love? Or the apps you love and complied from source?

You have a store bought appliance by default like every other one made.

I have a custom built desktop from ground up with only the apps I chose to suit my needs compiled from source like no other. So do they.

Beastie7 said:
This guide kind of sets the bar wayyyy too high for what a "beginner" is.
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It's what is formerly known as a Task Analysis and I have written many.

It doesn't get any easier than that.

Using FreeBSD on a day-to day basis not so easy and vanilla FreeBSD not for everyone. If they fail at following the tutorial, I have done them a Service in saving them from their overly zealous ambitions.
 
Trihexagonal said:
Are they the apps that came installed and learned to love? Or the apps you love and complied from source?

You have a store bought appliance by default like every other one made.

I have a custom built desktop from ground up with only the apps I chose to suit my needs compiled from source like no other. So do they.
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Well, I have most major open source, and commercial apps at my disposal. No emulation hacks, no tweaks, no wrestling in the shell.

But I understand; some LEGO masters are quite stoic. I prefer peace, and the fisher price path. ;)

Trihexagonal said:
I have previously stated I may have overestimated "mere mortals" in innate ability.
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Fair enough.

Trihexagonal said:
Don't sell yourself short. You're still here, aren't you?
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I'm just eating my popcorn, that's all.
 
Beastie7 said:
But I understand; some LEGO masters are quite stoic. I prefer peace, and the fisher price path.
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I have scrutinized the passing of celluloid images referred to in your culture as Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

It is as apparent to me now the mindset of the pod person is a consequence of the imperfection inherent in the human bean as a sub-species to those of root by nature. :rolleyes:
 
Tieks said:
Installing FreeBSD requires using the command line to configure a lot of things. That's not just a waste of time, it's a good learning experience. It is IMO the best way to really get to know your system.
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This is true (of course) - but it is pita if it has to be done each and every time. I change my OS from time to time on my laptops - tired of MxLinux / try SuSE again / use Fedora... but my script gets my environment together in less the 4h. If I'd have to fiddle out the correct X server configuration again and again, then it is a lot of experience... but a lot of a waste of time too.
 
Jörg Preiß said:
This is true (of course) - but it is pita if it has to be done each and every time. I change my OS from time to time on my laptops - tired of MxLinux / try SuSE again / use Fedora... but my script gets my environment together in less the 4h. If I'd have to fiddle out the correct X server configuration again and again, then it is a lot of experience... but a lot of a waste of time too.
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You can use poudriere-image(8) to run poudriere-image -t iso to create an ISO of an existing install that you can just dd onto another disk ;)
 
Jörg Preiß said:
… if different laptops need different X video drivers, …
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GhostBSD uses an approach that covers much of the diversity, so a single image can be good for a variety of graphics hardware.

NomadBSD also uses an approach that covers much of the diversity:

github.com

NomadBSD/config/etc/rc.d/initgfx at master · nomadbsd/NomadBSD

Livesystem based on FreeBSD. Contribute to nomadbsd/NomadBSD development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

CultBSD also uses an approach that covers much of the diversity …
 
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