# what bsd compilation is best for desktop pc update in 2021 ?



## senenmut (Oct 16, 2021)

Hello ,

simple update.
the reason for my question is to receive some opinions what compilation of bsd is actual the best in 2021.
i know GHOSTBSD and that is the best from my actual knowledge.
freebsd is the best indeed , however in this posting i ask for a extended version with full gui and "desktop style" configuration in form
of a .ISO for operating system installation , based on berkleys BSD. the one for absolute enduser with no knowledge in computer.
is it still GHOST ?

SM


----------



## eternal_noob (Oct 16, 2021)

I think the most complete BSD derivate nowadays is macOS.
Other than that FreeBSD is easy enough to install a desktop in no time.


----------



## zirias@ (Oct 16, 2021)

This is very opinionated, but I'd indeed assume so. At least, when suggesting portability fixes for emulators/emu64 upstream, I recommended ghostbsd to the upstream author (asking me a similar question), so he can test himself, and he was successful pretty quickly.

Still, I prefer "vanilla" FreeBSD. Installing and configuring some packages is a piece of cake, once you know the system.


----------



## bsduck (Oct 16, 2021)

senenmut said:


> the one for absolute enduser with no knowledge in computer.


GhostBSD is for sure still a valid option.

NomadBSD may be worth a try too (never tried myself). It was first designed as a system to put on a USB stick and carry around, but as far as I know it can be installed on a local disk just as fine.


----------



## shkhln (Oct 16, 2021)

2-clause is the most popular BSD, I think.



senenmut said:


> enduser with no knowledge in computer.


…should be subjected to compulsory education.


----------



## senenmut (Oct 16, 2021)

thank you. ghost and nomad. yeah , they are still on the top. become greater.


----------



## zirias@ (Oct 16, 2021)

Sorry, but "still on top" is (for example) FreeBSD: a general-purpose OS and a large project with many members and contributors, so you can pretty much take for granted it's still developed and maintained 5 or 10 years from now. And seriously, to be really happy with your desktop system, you'll have to learn how it works sooner or later anyways. So why not just do it upfront?


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Oct 16, 2021)

Mine is the best. Not that other guy's. Though whathisname's is pretty good but Joe Blow's sucks.

That summarizes all of them.

Every "compilation" is FreeBSD with someone's personal preferences. So make up your own personal preference and that one is the best. No one else's personal preferences are best for you.


----------



## Beastie7 (Oct 17, 2021)

I'd be helpful for everyone is there was a maintained script in base that automagically setups of a destop, plus all ACPI and I/O stuff. Perhaps include a small section in the handbook for it too as well for everyone to refer to. The existing instructions in the handbook doesn't go far enough for configuring a desktop in a convenient fashion.

That, or have the installer do it for users. Hell, you can even setup WiFi in the installer apparently.


----------



## Styrsven (Oct 17, 2021)

There is always sysutils/desktop-installer.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Oct 17, 2021)

Styrsven said:


> There is always sysutils/desktop-installer.



True, however it doesn't fit this criterion: 



senenmut said:


> … .ISO for operating system installation …



The suggestion is a good fit with a parallel topic: 









						Best (and Most Correct) Way to Run FreeBSD for Desktop
					

I want to give FreeBSD another chance. I've used FreeBSD as a desktop a little bit for about a year. But I am a complete noob and need the help of The FreeBSD Forums once again if I am to use it as my primary desktop.  See these two blog posts I made about how I installed FreeBSD (with the...




					forums.freebsd.org


----------



## senenmut (Oct 17, 2021)

yeah , this is really an option to check first. thank you for that information.
make desktop (http://acadix.biz/desktop-installer.php)


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Oct 17, 2021)

KDE Plasma

GhostBSD



senenmut said:


> … for absolute enduser with no knowledge in computer. …





bsduck said:


> GhostBSD is for sure still a valid option. …



 
Whilst I have no complaint about its use of MATE, I'd prefer KDE Plasma. Unfortunately <https://github.com/ghostbsd/ghostbsd-src/issues/26#issuecomment-831759021> it's "kinda out of the scope of the project there is no one working on that version.". Fair enough. 

Other works

Two names come to mind: Samuel Venable and christhegeek


----------



## christhegeek (Oct 20, 2021)

You could try CultBSD
Just install the updates it should be a lot of them.



senenmut said:


> Hello ,
> 
> simple update.
> the reason for my question is to receive some opinions what compilation of bsd is actual the best in 2021.
> ...


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Oct 20, 2021)

I would just wait 10 more weeks and then we can have a whole new thread about the bestest in the world for 2022!


----------



## senenmut (Oct 21, 2021)

christhegeek said:


> You could try CultBSD
> Just install the updates it should be a lot of them.


hello c.h.g. ,
do you know the system requirements for CultBSD ?


----------



## astyle (Oct 21, 2021)

senenmut said:


> hello c.h.g. ,
> do you know the system requirements for CultBSD ?


I'd recommend googling for CultBSD's website, and get system requirements straight from there.  Besides, these forums are FreeBSD-focused, so naturally anyone on these forums would be pushing FreeBSD as 'best'. Admittedly, this is a biased opinion, but it's to be expected on this (or any other) bandwagon. We do have forum rules about discussing/supporting FreeBSD derivatives:









						GhostBSD, pfSense, TrueNAS, and all other FreeBSD Derivatives
					

Questions about 'derivative FreeBSDs', like  GhostBSD DesktopBSD TrueNAS XigmaNAS OPNsense pfSense PacBSD BSD Router Project NomadBSD helloSystem  should be asked on the forums and/or mailing lists for these specific products. See below for links.  If you still think your questions should be...




					forums.freebsd.org
				



If you go to another forum (Like CultBSD's) to ask the same questions, you'll get the answer that CultBSD is the best - for the same reasons that we  push FreeBSD as 'best' on these forums. I think that in terms of evaluating the desktop experience, ease of setup - Distrowatch is an OK gauge for that. But personally, I think that nothing replaces just sitting down, reading some reviews on setup, and trying a few things yourself. Just match your hardware specs to what you can find, and go have fun!


----------



## senenmut (Oct 21, 2021)

yes it's true freebsd is the best.


----------



## astyle (Oct 21, 2021)

senenmut said:


> yes it's true freebsd is the best.


Typical bandwagon response, but  welcome to the club!


----------



## Hakaba (Oct 21, 2021)

There is Hello system based on FreeBSD with the goal to be as simple as possible. I never install it, but it fit the needs.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Oct 22, 2021)

> > … .ISO for operating system installation , …





Hakaba said:


> … it fit the needs.



Whilst helloSystem can be used to install FreeBSD <https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/user/components/utilities/install.html>, the more common use case might be live media *without* installation <https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/user/components/utilities/create-live-media.html>.

If you perform an installation, please be prepared to (at least) unlock `drm-fbsd12.0-kmod`.


----------



## decuser (Oct 23, 2021)

Hmm... I couldn’t resist. FreeBSD w/Plasma would be my first choice closely followed by FreeBSD w/XFCE. While it doesn’t come as a selection of the installer, the handbook describes installing either, just fine. It takes me 5 minutes to configure the system for either and the longest leg is the downloading packages. The advantages of having a rock solid, supported base with hyperactive and helpful community far outweigh the convenience of a pretty install button. 

Unfortunately, flavors of BSD without ZFS are pretty much off the table for me as desktops or servers. No way am I gonna sacrifice my sanity for sexy. That said, I still play around with OpenBSD for elegance and minimalism and NetBSD on embedded.


----------



## Son of a Beastie (Oct 23, 2021)

decuser said:


> Hmm... I couldn’t resist. FreeBSD w/Plasma would be my first choice closely followed by FreeBSD w/XFCE. While it doesn’t come as a selection of the installer, the handbook describes installing either, just fine. It takes me 5 minutes to configure the system for either and the longest leg is the downloading packages. The advantages of having a rock solid, supported base with hyperactive and helpful community far outweigh the convenience of a pretty install button.
> 
> Unfortunately, flavors of BSD without ZFS are pretty much off the table for me as desktops or servers. No way am I gonna sacrifice my sanity for sexy. That said, I still play around with OpenBSD for elegance and minimalism and NetBSD on embedded.


NetBSD supports ZFS and has for some time.


----------



## christhegeek (Oct 23, 2021)

senenmut said:


> hello c.h.g. ,
> do you know the system requirements for CultBSD ?


I could run it very nicely in an older i3 with 4gbytes of Ram and  intergrated intel .
Live might need 4Gbytes of Ram and it will work on intel and amd and many older radeon that needs radeonkms also it will run in not ancient nvidia gpus that can work with the latest freebsd nvidia driver.
I will make another release that will be lighter and smaller in size .
CultBSD was made from the start not based on other FreeBSD projects , the live is made with partially load some folders to ram. Its scripts , its text installer script and the simple Graphical Installer is made by me .
    There are some things that needs fixing for example on my last release i forgot on the live some directories with files that won't be used on live anyway and also i didn't compressed the directories that are gonna be loaded to Ram only tar them. Also i must do a lot of cleaning so it can have smaller size but i will not sacrifice performance for an extra compressed tiny image.
    There is room for a hell lot of improving but performance of the live image and the installed system is No1 priority.

 About the filesystem  .... well i use ufs  , of course i could add some lines to the script and support zfs installation but this project is aimed for the Desktop user and its more likely the user wouldn't have a raid disk configuration . 

- If you have an old pc with lower specs or if you have a really really old nvidia that isn't supported by the latest driver don't cry !  You can just switch to a terminal and just use the text installer ;-)
-Only one version of nvidia-driver can be installed so i chose the latest version this release with Plasma is not for really really old pcs


----------



## decuser (Oct 23, 2021)

Son of a Beastie said:


> NetBSD supports ZFS and has for some time.


Yeah, but I still find it difficult to use as a workstation.


----------



## bsduck (Oct 24, 2021)

christhegeek said:


> About the filesystem .... well i use ufs , of course i could add some lines to the script and support zfs installation but this project is aimed for the Desktop user and its more likely the user wouldn't have a raid disk configuration .


ZFS doesn't need RAID to be nice!


----------



## christhegeek (Oct 25, 2021)

bsduck said:


> ZFS doesn't need RAID to be nice!


I'm sure you're right but my mini home server had some hard times with only one power outage.


----------



## zirias@ (Oct 25, 2021)

I only use UFS on the weakest desktop machine, an old EeePC. All three others have ZFS. Integrated RAID is just one nice feature, a lot of others (checksumming, zvols, cheap/fast snapshots/clones and on top of that boot environments, ...) are still very useful on a single disk.


christhegeek said:


> my mini home server had some hard times with only one power outage.


I don't think that's much different with UFS SU+J. Both filesystems make it pretty unlikely to have damage from a power outage, but you can be unlucky…


----------



## hardworkingnewbie (Oct 25, 2021)

Zirias said:


> I only use UFS on the weakest desktop machine, an old EeePC. All three others have ZFS. Integrated RAID is just one nice feature, a lot of others (checksumming, zvols, cheap/fast snapshots/clones and on top of that boot environments, ...) are still very useful on a single disk


I also use ZFS on one machine with one SSD only. I disagree though about the checksumming: this has no big benefit on a single disk, because then you only know that there's an error, but you will be unable to fix it due to lack of redundancy.

So checksumming on a single disk does just offer the same functionality like SMART: you know there's an error, also if the error count goes high that it might be a good idea to replace your storage device and that's all about it.


----------



## zirias@ (Oct 25, 2021)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> So checksumming on a single disk does just offer the same functionality like SMART: you know there's an error, also if the error count goes high that it might be a good idea to replace your storage device and that's all about it.


Not really the same. ZFS will detect affected files, preventing undetected "bit rot" of your actual data (you can restore them from backups).

With RAID, fixing the error can be automatic, yes. But even with RAID, you need backups of relevant data anyways (imagine 2 or 3 disks failing, or just having a "stupid moment" at root's prompt…)


----------



## christhegeek (Oct 25, 2021)

ZFS is very advanced and with a lot of featuresbut i think that it needs some specific specs i can't just install it to a potato pc because i had the idea to repurpose it to a mini homeserver , anyway its the best and it supports compression and that makes it ideal for FreeBSD based projects they  using it to load the live cd (~3GB) to ram with a compressed zfs using mdconfig (swap type) , the other way is to use uzip but if you use maximum comprerssion the usb flash would be slow and on top of that you need to have write access for some directories anyway . I didn't wanted to follow this method (using compressed zfs) cause it has many limitations i use uzip with zstd compression and some directories i load them to ram so the usb flash media is fast and i have no limitation i could make a release with a ton of pre-installed software .


Zirias said:


> Not really the same. ZFS will detect affected files, preventing undetected "bit rot" of your actual data (you can restore them from backups).
> 
> With RAID, fixing the error can be automatic, yes. But even with RAID, you need backups of relevant data anyways (imagine 2 or 3 disks failing, or just having a "stupid moment" at root's prompt…)


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Oct 26, 2021)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> … checksumming on a single disk does just offer the same functionality like SMART …



No, S.M.A.R.T. is a very different creature.


----------



## astyle (Oct 26, 2021)

Mr. Salty said:


> Do they have root on ZFS yet, instead of an FFS boot partition and a ZFS root ramdisk?


They support it, and have a wiki on how to do it, but it was not worked into the installer yet.


----------



## christhegeek (Oct 28, 2021)

The truth is that the best bsd compilation is that you make by yourself with your bare hands and will cover your needs or taste .


----------



## jbo (Oct 28, 2021)

I really don't get this discussion regarding ZFS. Since FreeBSD 11 I have been using ZFS on literally any system that runs FreeBSD. No matter whether it's a single-disk system or a storage pod with 48 drives. From laptops to large servers. ZFS is my goto without even thinking about it. I did not experience any notable disadvantages in any of these scenarios. It's rock solid, super simple to use yet provides a shit ton of features to discover for when you feel bored during a family dinner.

That being sad tho: I don't run any machine without a battery backup so I can't comment on power outage resilience.


----------



## astyle (Oct 28, 2021)

jbodenmann said:


> It's rock solid, super simple to use yet provides a shit ton of features to discover


Rock solid and feature-rich - yes, I completely agree. Super simple to use? I disagree. It took me a couple weeks to figure out that it's better to not mess with the FreeBSD's default setup of ZFS datasets if I am to take full advantage of Boot Environments.


----------



## christhegeek (Oct 29, 2021)

I will consider moving this project to zfs , if i will decide to make another release it will be way more professional !


----------



## christhegeek (Oct 29, 2021)

The only problem with most bsd compilations are also the touchpad support , touchpad support can be a hell , i had a laptop that it could work only when i used iichid i usually compiling it from git . Touchpad configuration is a bit tricky i think , when i was new to FreeBSD i searched a lot before find something that was gonna help me.


----------



## jbo (Oct 29, 2021)

christhegeek said:


> The only problem with most bsd compilations are also the touchpad support , touchpad support can be a hell


I perceive the missing WiFi 5 (and WiFi 6) drivers to be much more of a problem than touchpad support to be honest


----------



## christhegeek (Nov 8, 2021)

I had a problem on my electric installation of my home it was the water boiler that caused many power outages , i called some electricians and fixed that somehow , i don't want to say something thats wrong but for me i'm happy with my ufs thank you.


----------



## Vull (Nov 8, 2021)

Each filesystem has it's advantages. For my multi-boot development machine I prefer ufs, but for any kind of serious dedicated real-time live system, I'd go with zfs.


----------



## christhegeek (Nov 8, 2021)

Vull said:


> Each filesystem has it's advantages. For my multi-boot development machine I prefer ufs, but for any kind of serious dedicated real-time live system, I'd go with zfs.


You are right but i've seen it all , i'm still writting from a pc that endured a hell of power outages i was even recording something on obs and after i started my computer the video was there untouched lol.
My files,photos,videos,files are there i'm ok with the inferior ufs thank you .


----------



## Vull (Nov 8, 2021)

christhegeek said:


> You are right but i've seen it all , i'm still writting from a pc that endured a hell of power outages i was even recording something on obs and after i started my computer the video was there untouched lol.
> My files,photos,videos,files are there i'm ok with the inferior ufs thank you .


I think ufs is a bit underrated. It's easier to learn and I'd recommend it for beginners or casual users, but it does lack some useful features which zfs readily provides and which I'd consider essential for a serious service machine. Arguably maybe not totally "essential," but definitely superior and extremely desirable.


----------



## christhegeek (Nov 8, 2021)

Vull said:


> I think ufs is a bit underrated. It's easier to learn and I'd recommend it for beginners or casual users, but it does lack some useful features which zfs readily provides and which I'd consider essential for a serious service machine. Arguably maybe not totally "essential," but definitely superior and extremely desirable.


Zfs has more advanced futures but anyway everything is good at its field ufs for the desktop and zfs for the servers.


----------



## bsduck (Nov 8, 2021)

christhegeek said:


> everything is good at its field ufs for the desktop and zfs for the servers


That categorisation doesn't make sense, both are fine for either desktop or server in most usecases.
Use whatever you prefer, that's all


----------



## christhegeek (Nov 8, 2021)

bsduck said:


> That categorisation doesn't make sense, both are fine for either desktop or server in most usecases.
> Use whatever you prefer, that's all


I prefer the one that won't lose all my data


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Nov 9, 2021)

christhegeek said:


> … i'm happy with my ufs …



<https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/ufs-zeroing-free-space.82880/> (an installation of CultBSD) _73 G, compacted, for a system that uses only 12 G_


----------



## christhegeek (Nov 24, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> <https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/ufs-zeroing-free-space.82880/> (an installation of CultBSD) _73 G, compacted, for a system that uses only 12 G_


Yes i have noticed that .
Anyway the next releases will be distributed in iso.
You can rely on Ufs at least for the desktop and on single disk setup its rock solid


----------

