# Ubuntu vs PC-BSD



## ramakrishna (Sep 3, 2012)

Which one is the best os?


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## wblock@ (Sep 3, 2012)

The one that works better for you.


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## gkontos (Sep 3, 2012)

You really can't compare apples with oranges...


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## jb_fvwm2 (Sep 3, 2012)

I was impressed by ghostbsd.org (3.0 beta) (desktop AND installer) though I was using it only for the latter, and it had the same gotcha's as a regular bsdinstall and/or sysinstall  would have[1]... (BTW I neglected to create a  regular user during the setup phase, so the install (which I did not wish to fully complete anyway) failed with that error...)

[1] In this particular use case.  Maybe not for a fresh install in its entirety.


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## vermaden (Sep 3, 2012)

ramakrishna said:
			
		

> Which one is the best os?



No such thing exist on Earth. Each one has its own problems and drawbacks.


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## UNIXgod (Sep 4, 2012)

ramakrishna said:
			
		

> Which one is the best os?



OSX for your developement=)

and OpenBSD for your gateway server: DragonflyBSD for your WebServer and FreeBSD for your Database Server!


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## Majorix (Sep 4, 2012)

Umm guys, the OP (although he did not cleary state that) wants us to compare Ubuntu and PC-BSD. As for me, I don't know. Both are heavy.


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## UNIXgod (Sep 4, 2012)

Majorix said:
			
		

> Umm guys, the OP (although he did not cleary state that) wants us to compare Ubuntu and PC-BSD. As for me, I don't know. Both are heavy.



*vs* type of threads tend to create xenophobic responses. The responses given in this thread for the most part are to avoid such absurdity and for the most part are accurate responses.


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## fluca1978 (Sep 4, 2012)

Why no try them for yourself? These days it is not such complex to fire up a virtual machine and test a system to get a real taste. Then you use one of them for a few month and decide if your satisfied or need to go to the other system.


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## sossego (Sep 5, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> You really can't compare apples with oranges...


How about Apples with Windows?


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## gkontos (Sep 5, 2012)

sossego said:
			
		

> How about Apples with Windows?



Still no point in this. Google "Apple vs Windows" and you will see why...


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## olav (Sep 5, 2012)

I have just spent one month with PCBSD. After this month I deleted it and installed Kubuntu.
I think PCBSD is great in many ways, however the ports for desktop applications often have serious errors or conflicts. Nvidia 3D performance was also noticably slower on PCBSD compared to Kubuntu. There was also an annoying bug with KDE starting to overload X.org server which caused the desktop to become unbearable slow over time and required a restart of the whole desktop environment. What finally made me to remove PCBSD and install Kubuntu was  when it was time to update PCBSD. Everything crashed with a big bang, and I don't have the time to fix it.

I think the PCBSD team has done a great job, its just those minor issues that annoys me just a bit too much. Ubuntu is more polished and need less maintenance work. That is my conclusion.


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## fluca1978 (Sep 5, 2012)

olav said:
			
		

> I think PCBSD is great in many ways, however the ports for desktop applications often have serious errors or conflicts. Nvidia 3D performance was also noticably slower on PCBSD compared to Kubuntu. There was also an annoying bug with KDE starting to overload X.org server which caused the desktop to become unbearable slow over time and required a restart of the whole desktop environment.



Have you experienced the same issues on a plain FreeBSD installation? I mean, are the above faults of PCBSD or of the FreeBSD/KDE/Desktop status?



			
				olav said:
			
		

> I think the PCBSD team has done a great job, its just those minor issues that annoys me just a bit too much. Ubuntu is more polished and need less maintenance work. That is my conclusion.



I'm not sure about the future of Kubuntu, and I prefer anyway FreeBSD when compared to Linux, since (any)ubuntu seems to me have an update policy that tend to break the desktop.


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## TiberiusDuval (Sep 5, 2012)

My own experiences with PC-BSD have been mostly positive, in fact so much positive that I have changed from using Ubuntu to using PC-BSD as my main os. At leat 9.1rc1 has been mostly unproblematic for me. KDE slowing over time issues have been solved, headphone jack problem is solved, even additional desktop environments installs are working now for me (they did not work under 9.0). Now I'm trying carefully some other things, like installing additional software from FreeBSD ports. 

For me PC-BSD suites quite well, maybe someday in future when I have more experienc of systems quirks I may even try clean FreeBSD install.


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## swa (Sep 5, 2012)

Don't waste your time on (k)Ubuntu. For linux: go for openSUSE or buy SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop if all you want is being productive. Else, forget linux and go for PCBSD.


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## sossego (Sep 6, 2012)

gkontos said:
			
		

> Still no point in this. Google "Apple vs Windows" and you will see why...



I hang my nerdy head in shame because you did not understand that it was a joke.


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## fluca1978 (Sep 6, 2012)

swa said:
			
		

> Don't waste your time on (k)Ubuntu. For linux: go for openSUSE or buy SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop if all you want is being productive. Else, forget linux and go for PCBSD.



I worked with OpenSuse at the time of the 10 or so release, so ages ago. It was not that bad, but Debian was better (and therefore my switch to <any>Ubuntu for the desktop). I helped an ex colleague administering a Suse enterprise and it did not impressed me so much, at least for the server side.
It could be interesting to know your point, briefly, to not get out of topic.


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## swa (Sep 10, 2012)

fluca1978 said:
			
		

> I worked with OpenSuse at the time of the 10 or so release, so ages ago. It was not that bad, but Debian was better (and therefore my switch to <any>Ubuntu for the desktop). I helped an ex colleague administering a Suse enterprise and it did not impressed me so much, at least for the server side.
> It could be interesting to know your point, briefly, to not get out of topic.


As the topic starter doesn't react I think all he wants is a usable desktop without interfering to much with the community or google . The point is I think OpenSUSE desktop gives the best ability to manage for oneself. YaST is good for just getting things done, and KDE in OpenSUSE is nice polished. Of course it's only my opinion, but personally I've had good experience, it just works. SLED is based on OpenSUSE but stabilized (and older). For server I always first consider FreeBSD.


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## GuillotinePartition (Sep 22, 2012)

pc-bsd is good, but prefer FreeBSD because it is true to bsd and worth more of the investment in the longrun. If i had a choice between ubu and pcb, i would go with xubuntu, but i strayed away from that as well and got into slackware. So started off with FreeBSD and PcBSD, and xubuntu, but eventually ended up with FreeBSD and Slackware. As everyone else stated, try both and see which one you are comfortable with.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Sep 23, 2012)

I got my first taste of FreeBSD with PC-BSD v0.7.5 and with the exception of the time the PC I ran it on was down stayed with it for the next 7 years or so. 

I didn't care for the .pbi system and started using ports almost exclusively early on, but since everything else was already done for you got in very little console time other than that. Since switching to installing FreeBSD from scratch earlier this year I've learned more about the base system than in all the years I used PC-BSD and use it as my only OS.

I used a few different Linux distros before I started using PC-BSD, and a few since, but have never used Ubuntu so I can't comment on that. Only that I don't care for Linux at all, and that if you want to learn about FreeBSD build it from scratch.


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## RancerDS (May 16, 2013)

I'm going to assume you mean Ubuntu base with UNITY.

Like some people pointed out, some very distinct differences.  It can be compared to the long-standing Macintosh versus IBM-PC compat*i*bles debate.

Having said that, it's time to rant a bit. I installed PC-BSD 8.1 on a SATA drive. Instead of using it consistently, put that drive on a shelf. When I pulled it off the shelf and threw it into the system, no problems with boot-up on with the same system setup. But guess what? PC-BSD's PBI system was gone! No more PBIDIR.COM or whatever it was! So I'm rather perturbed with the support for legacy versions/OSes. Still, having a stronger background i*n* FreeBSD/PC-BSD, am still a "follower".

But since then I've installed Linux Mint 9 on a USB. It's bootable. It's portable. And it's fairly easy to use (XFCE) while still doing what it was desired to do, browsing the web.

Since then, I've installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, Linux Mint 13 (KDE) and 14 (MATE) and Peppermint 3 OS'es. Also created bootable CD's for Haiku (BeOS/bfs) and Slacko Puppy 5.4! Out of all of these, which one do you think I'm using the most? ANSWER: Peppermint 3.

Now I'll tell you the "whys". It's so portable, it's not even funny. Installed the ISO on a 1 Gb SD media card. Then when installed on a 40 Gb drive (with bad sectors) upon my best dual core system and then connected to an old Dell XPS D300 tower (300Mhz!). And it worked. With only 96 Mb RAM (incl. huge swap file). Peppermint boots quickly compared to most. It's easy to update. It doesn't require a lot of system resources to run. Yet I can use Firefox with Add-Ons, plus has Flash support so I can play all of the Facebook games. It uses the Debian package system. So even if the basic-featured *Software Manager* doesn't find it, download the Debian (.deb) package and double-click. And it has one of the best disk utility managers for formatting and partitioning with various file-systems in gnome-disk-utility. Excellent support for my Nvidia video card. No fine-tuning was needed. Very good dynamic range with the built-in sound controller. Not quite as good as Linux Mint as far as output wattage, but close.

I'm so impressed with it, planning on using Peppermint 3 OS for a web-hosting server. Now I've only been running it over the past couple of weeks, so comparatively speaking not sure I'll ever see the same up-time as on most of my BSD installs. And I still have the old eMachines 633Mhz system with FreeBSD 6.1 that boots and runs even today.

But out-of-the-box experience (OOTB) would be rated a 10! The only downside is it doesn't support multiple desktops and the applications shown on the taskbar can not be re-ordered. So those of you wanting a very customizable desktop may not find it as near-perfect.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 17, 2013)

I think Peppermint is the worst thing that ever darkened our door. We tried it once and kicked ourselves for spending one waking minute dealing with that thing. It's an abomination no one should be shamed with. A bile builds up in my mouth just saying the name. 

OTOH, PC-BSD has been great! My wife uses it and my son, who was once a Windows only user, kisses my hand every morning to thank me for showing him the way. I even installed it on two of my old, retired boxes with PentiumIIIs and it ran like a charm. I'll probably put it on my new box tomorrow!

But throw that Peppermint distro out along with all those other Linux POSes.


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## zspider (May 17, 2013)

I put Linux Mint 14 on another computer recently, to experiment with running some games on WINE and it wasn't long before I ran into the flakiness (ex: file transfers from server hanging up, random graphical failures) that caused me to flee, some 4 or 5 years earlier.


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## hitest (May 18, 2013)

On the positive side Ubuntu does easily set up a dual boot system with Windows very well if that is important to you.  On the negative side Ubuntu is very heavy on system resources.  For Linux I generally prefer Slackware.  Which OS is better?  That is difficult if not impossible to say.  If I had to choose I would opt for PC-BSD over Ubuntu.


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## TiberiusDuval (May 18, 2013)

Does Slackware have decent package management system (ie. one capable of resolving package dependency issues)? Debian's package management system is one of Ubuntu's best features. 

And Ubuntu's heaviness on resources depends on what desktop environment you are running. KDE or Unity yes it takes some resources, XFCE less, LXDE even less, E17 even less and so on...


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## hitest (May 18, 2013)

TiberiusDuval said:
			
		

> Does Slackware have decent package management system (ie. one capable of resolving package dependency issues)? Debian's package management system is one of Ubuntu's best features.
> 
> And Ubuntu's heaviness on resources depends on what desktop environment you are running. KDE or Unity yes it takes some resources, XFCE less, LXDE even less, E17 even less and so on...



No. Slackware does not resolve dependencies.  If dependency resolution is important to you I would stick with Debian or Ubuntu. True.  If you install a lighter DE/WM Ubuntu will run faster.  If I had to opt for a Debian based Linux I would choose Debian over Ubuntu.  Debian has some annoying philosophical idiosyncrasies, but in my opinion Debian is a superior OS compared to Ubuntu.


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## TiberiusDuval (May 18, 2013)

I'd say dependency resolvation is quite important at least for someone not wanting to deeply study what every single application needs. Especially when one does not want to risk that installing some new application will break others. Isn't that also direction FreeBSD is taking with pkgng? 

Debian is quite decent, though as you say it has some quite annoying philosophical issues. 

Personally I use PC-BSD as my main os on my desktop machine. On my old laptop Xubuntu 12.04 works fine, most of my rather antiquated Lenovo T60's peripherals worked without any need for tinkering OS's innards.


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## hitest (May 18, 2013)

TiberiusDuval said:
			
		

> I'd say dependency resolvation is quite important at least for someone not wanting to deeply study what every single application needs. Especially when one does not want to risk that installing some new application will break others. Isn't that also direction FreeBSD is taking with pkgng?
> 
> Debian is quite decent, though as you say it has some quite annoying philosophical issues.
> 
> Personally I use PC-BSD as my main os on my desktop machine. On my old laptop Xubuntu 12.04 works fine, most of my rather antiquated Lenovo T60's peripherals worked without any need for tinkering OS's innards.



A full install of Slackware works out of the box with all dependencies met. If you wish to install third party applications Slackware provides exceptional documentation about required dependencies. If PC-BSD and Xubuntu are meeting your needs then I would continue to enjoy your OSs.


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## RancerDS (May 18, 2013)

Thank you everyone for follow-up posts regarding mine.  I enjoyed reading them.  It didn't matter if they were negative.  We all get our minds made and are happy with something, that is the main thing.

I am curious if the person having problems running Peppermint was using an earlier version.

As to running Windows applications, I've had very mixed results with WINE on ANY operating system.  Baseball Mogul 2006 works fine.  It looks like it would have worked with the first Empire Earth had it not been for that introduction movie. SuperPower (from GolemLabs) worked on occasion and froze in other instances. Steam for Ubuntu did not work for CounterStrike: Source.  But that was developed to where WINE wasn't necessary.

Moral of the story, continue to run Windows for those Windows-based games we can't live without.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 18, 2013)

We tried the current version. Peppermint should be an embarrassment to those people. How can they create such a thing?! Just awful!! Stay away!


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