# TrueOS



## JazzSinatra (Jun 1, 2017)

Do you have any opinion about TrueOS? Do you think that it has good future ahead it and do you believe that TrueOS has good or bad influence to FreeBSD? Could TrueOS compete with Windows, Mac OS or Linux? I'm interested to know what FreeBSD users generally think about TrueOS.


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## gkontos (Jun 2, 2017)

It has been evolved from PC-BSD. I would not use if for production since it follows FreeBSD-Current. I installed it once in my laptop and was not very satisfied.


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## ronaldlees (Jun 6, 2017)

It seems to be a hit-and-miss thing for me.   The February ISO's boot right up, but for me nothing since ...  I'm guessing the moderator is going to point out the "sticky" at the top of this forum section, and suggest that the conversation continue on trueos.org.


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## hitest (Jun 6, 2017)

I prefer FreeBSD, but, each to his/her own.


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## rigoletto@ (Jun 7, 2017)

Well, if the OP objective is to find something like a pre-cooked FreeBSD for some reason, I would go with GhostBSD instead of TrueOS. I do not use it but GhostBSD deviate very little from the vanilla FreeBSD.

I have absolute nothing against TrueOS but I think it is too much customized for my taste, to the point you cannot use pkg(8) without the risk of breaking the system.


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## sko (Jun 8, 2017)

lebarondemerde said:


> I have absolute nothing against TrueOS but I think it is too much customized for my taste, to the point you cannot use pkg(8) without the risk of breaking the system.



You can use it - however, it is not the "vanilla" pkg from FreeBSD but with some safeguards to play nice with the appcafe and the special upgrade mechanism TrueOS uses. I actually use pkg exclusively when removing packages, because AppCafe just removes every dependency without further notice and happily nukes your desktop setup on the way...

I'm running TrueOS on my desktops at work and my notebook and if i weren't such a lazy bastard and finally move all my stuff over to the ZFS-pool, also full-time on my desktop at home. Main reason: I'm a lazy bastard...  TrueOS and Lumina only need little modifications to fit my daily workflow and both work really well nowadays. Especially with the first few releases and updates, some things broke (especially skylake/i915 graphics related), but either falling back to SCFB/Modesetting or just rolling back to the previous BE always gave me back a working system so I was quickly able to get back to work. (Yes, this would also apply to vanilla FreeBSD with a custom DE installation)


I'm also still evaluating TrueOS for the clients at our company - or better say I'm using the term "evaluation" for the test run for an upcoming transition to TrueOS on all Clients .
The first 4 NUCs I've deployed are still fine after ~5 months, 5 more clients were installed since then and all users are quite happy so far. The automated deployment via Ansible still needs some polishing for some configurations, but basically works, and maintenance either via ansible or manually via SysAdm is working fine.
Yes, this could be all built from scratch with FreeBSD - but as said: I'm a lazy bastard   Also the support for current Intel graphics is key when trying to deploy on various intel-based client platforms with reasonable effort (I'm a one-man-show and have to run the whole infrastructure....)


On servers I rely on vanilla FreeBSD because I like to get my 8 hours of peaceful sleep every night. That's also why I migrated everything from linux to FreeBSD....


To refer to the original questions:
I think especially Lumina as a home-grown BSD-specific DE could be a great benefit not only for FreeBSD. Most (all?) other DEs often suffer from Linuxisms that either break things or need a lot of work to port/adapt to FreeBSD or even BSD in general.
Also the wider use of the -CURRENT branch through TrueOS and the increased feedback and also the work from iX that gets upstreamed might ease and accelerate the development and lead to more mature and tested -RELEASE branch (IMHO).

I don't know if iXsystems really wants to compete with the Windows or Mac world - I really hope they don't. These are completely different ecosystems and target groups. I doubt it would be of any benefit to try and "copy" any of these systems, because their typical users have vastly different concept of an operating system and how to work and interact with a computer.
Looking at the Linux world it went downhill really fast and really ugly since they (forcefully) tried to adapt linux to the desktop for the average pointy-clicky windows user. I doubt this kind of travesty would be possible in the FreeBSD ecosystem though...


So to sum it up: 


JazzSinatra said:


> I'm interested to know what FreeBSD users generally think about TrueOS.


I think TrueOS is beneficial for FreeBSD and I really like to use it on my desktop machines. Despite some modifications and specialties it's still mainly FreeBSD under the hood and thus also perfectly fits my every-day work with FreeBSD (and illumos) Servers.


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## bookwormep (Jun 8, 2017)

My CPU architecture(s) are x86_i386. I would not be able to use TrueOS. (At least until the hardware needs replacement.)


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## NewGuy (Jun 9, 2017)

I used to run PC-BSD/TrueOS on servers when it followed FreeBSD's RELEASE cycle. When they shifted to a rolling model based on -CURRENT I found my upgrades constantly broke and I stopped using it. TrueOS is an interesting testing ground, but I'd never run it on  a production machine or a main workstation, it's not designed to be stable/usable from one month to the next.

For desktop flavours of FreeBSD, GhostBSD is probably your best bet. It's stable, lighter and geared toward less advanced users. Though neither are ever going to compete against macOS or Windows for market share.


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## xavi (Jun 12, 2017)

NewGuy said:


> When they shifted to a rolling model based on -CURRENT I found my upgrades constantly broke and I stopped using it


Their release model has changed slightly in the last month. You can read about it here.


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## kpedersen (Jun 12, 2017)

sko said:


> I think especially Lumina as a home-grown BSD-specific DE could be a great benefit not only for FreeBSD. Most (all?) other DEs often suffer from Linuxisms that either break things or need a lot of work to port/adapt to FreeBSD or even BSD in general.



True but if we stuck with Gnome 2.12 and for those 12 years since 2005 purely focussed on compatibility, tweaks, fixes rather than always playing catchup with the latest (arguably broken) upstream releases, we could have had an advanced and extremely robust DE by now. I tried back then but failed. Gnome in it's current state was too large for one person, but with a small team (i.e gnome@), this would have been very possible.

It is so silly that this 12 year old screenshot of an older Gnome: http://www.osnews.com/img/11800/gnome1.png shows more functionality than most modern environments.


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## NewGuy (Jun 12, 2017)

xavi said:


> Their release model has changed slightly in the last month. You can read about it here.



I saw that too, but running -CURRENT as a base is not at all appealing for my servers.


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## sidetone (Jun 18, 2017)

hitest said:


> I prefer FreeBSD, but, each to his/her own.


That's why you're on this forum.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 17, 2017)

JazzSinatra said:


> Do you have any opinion about TrueOS? Do you think that it has good future ahead it and do you believe that TrueOS has good or bad influence to FreeBSD? Could TrueOS compete with Windows, Mac OS or Linux? I'm interested to know what FreeBSD users generally think about TrueOS.



I helped beta test PC-BSD beginning at 0.73, when it was at FreeBSD 5.3 IIRC, on and into the 1.0 series before moving to vanilla FreeBSD in 2005. I considered it to be the Windows of the BSD world, though I have not, and would not, use TrueOS due to my experience with PC-BSD.


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## Dan MacDonald (Jul 20, 2017)

I've been using TrueOS as my main OS for the last few months. I like it and I want it to succeed but I cannot recommend it over FreeBSD for servers or Linux/Windows as a desktop OS. Not yet anyway.

GOOD POINTS

TrueOS is an easier way to get started with FreeBSD than vanilla FreeBSD. GhostBSD is still based upon FreeBSD 10.x and doesn't support ZFS. GhostBSD 11 has some experimental ZFS support but its devs don't recommend it be used. Hence GhostBSD is ancient and is of no interest to me whatsoever because ZFS is pretty much the only reason I use FreeBSD and TrueOS.

Better (Intel) GPU support out-of-the-box - My laptop has an Intel Haswell GPU. Whilst thats pretty old now, its not properly supported in FreeBSD 11 nor 12 - I cannot achieve 4K output under either. TrueOS has drm-next integrated into its kernel and so this allows me to get the full 4K res out of my display. This is the main reason I'm running it over vanilla FreeBSD.

Boot env install. I think this is the best thing to happen to OS installation during my lifetime. I hope FreeBSD, OpenIndiana and all other ZFS-friendly OSs adopt TrueOS ability to install into a boot env.

BAD POINTS

I'm very concerned about TrueOS support or lack of it. I have opened 7 github tickets for TrueOS specific issues over the last two months. Only one of them got a reply - that PCDM autologin was broke. They said they fixed and closed the ticket but myself and other users have found that it is still broken and we've had no reply since. One of the other unreplied issues involves the TrueOS installer trashing my FreeBSD 11 install and making it unbootable - its been over a month since I reported that and I've not had a single response from the devs yet. I realise these are complex probs and may take time to fix and whilst It would be unreasonable to expect an instant fix the TrueOS team should make every effort to at least reply to all valid bug reports within a few days of people opening them or else people are likely to give up on the project and they won't have any testers or users.

Lumina. I understand why they want to create a (Free)BSD centric desktop and I would like to see it succeed but its just not ready yet. The Lumina version shipped in current TrueOS releases is buggy (and ugly) as all hell and I simply find it unusable. I can't even play a video fullscreen properly. Once you swap it out for a more mature desktop such as MATE, which is easily done thankfully, you get a usable desktop OS but first impressions count and Lumina is not putting their best foot forward. If the TrueOS/Lumina team are reading this - PLEASE don't waste your time on creating any Lumina apps! There is too much work needed to be done on the actual Lumina desktop to be wasting time creating new, Lumina specific text editors, media players etc.

Poor default apps. TrueOS now ships with Qupzilla as the default browser, to save space on the install iso. Bad idea! I used it for 10 minutes until I encountered serious probs and was forced to install Firefox. I would honestly rather see TrueOS ship with no browser than an unusable one. In general I find most of the apps shipped with TrueOS not to be fit for purpose and I have to install more suitable alternatives.

On top of this, as someone has already mentioned, many users (including myself) have been unable to install any TrueOS releases since March/April. Again, this is something I have created a TrueOS github ticket for but it has been ignored so far.

TrueOS holds much promise but they need to up their support game and start listening to their users more.


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## rufwoof (Jul 20, 2017)

kpedersen said:


> It is so silly that this 12 year old screenshot of an older Gnome: http://www.osnews.com/img/11800/gnome1.png shows more functionality than most modern environments.


Looks just like Mate (which Mate being based on gnome2 I guess is would).

As a neub I've opted for FreeBSD 11 Release with Mate ... using just pre-build binaries (pkg install) ... and that works well whilst being relatively easy. Haven't tried TrueOS, and don't feel any need to try it either.

Installed FreeBSD, followed the guidance similar to here (couldn't find/install xf86-video-fbdev, but I guess as I installed x11/nvidia-driver-340 for my old GT8600 that doesn't seem to matter), and intend to keep it updated with
freebsd-update fetch
freebsd-update install
pkg upgrade


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 20, 2017)

rufwoof said:


> couldn't find/install xf86-video-fbdev



It's not in the ports tree. If you have a question about what is the FreeBSD ports tree, or what dependencies they require, the About FreeBSD Ports page comes in handy:

https://www.freebsd.org/ports/


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## islamux (Jul 21, 2017)

I just want to test TrueOS because they say it's easy way to enter FreeBSD world but 
all i saw are
unstablity
ugly desktop & crash for time to time
browser carshed
vesa driver dosn't work for my lenovo labtop T430
intel driver not work well
and alot of that
so i think TrueOS dosn't the gateway to FreeBSD


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## dinsdale (Jul 22, 2017)

https://discourse.trueos.org/t/my-review-of-trueos/1646/14?u=dinsdale

Please don't eat me for saying FreeBSD is broken. I meant it in a loving and kind way. 

(And how am I still new member? I've been here since 2013!)


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## dinsdale (Jul 22, 2017)

islamux said:


> I just want to test TrueOS because they say it's easy way to enter FreeBSD world but
> all i saw are
> unstablity
> ugly desktop & crash for time to time
> ...



Welcome to FreeBSD? 

It's easy enough to switch to mate or KDE. Just install it through App Cafe. Driver issues can't really be blamed on the TrueOS team.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 22, 2017)

dinsdale said:


> (And how am I still new member? I've been here since 2013!)



They've changed forum software during my hiatus but member status appears to be based on the number of your posts. From the people who have posted in this thread there is:

islamux
New Member
messages 15

sko
Active Member
Messages 161

lebarondemerde
Well-Known Member
Messages 436

kpedersen
Aspiring Daemon
Messages 964

gkontos
Daemon
Messages 2,047

You currently have 19 posts.


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## dinsdale (Jul 22, 2017)

Trihexagonal said:


> They've changed forum software during my hiatus but member status appears to be based on the number of your posts. From the people who have posted in this thread there is:
> 
> islamux
> New Member
> ...



Thank you, I was pointing out that irony in an attempt to indicate I have been skulking on this forum for some time so my opinion is not that of a 'new user'. Also, an apparently poor attempt at humor.  

update: Oh, and this post just pushed me into Member! yay!


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 23, 2017)

islamux said:


> want to test TrueOS because they say it's easy way to enter FreeBSD world


I wouldn't say so, but obviously "they" would. Installing FreeBSD with no GUI has got to be about as easy as it gets. If somebody wants easier than that - get somebody else to do it.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 23, 2017)

I don't want to cause bad blood, especially since that was over a decade ago, but there was a serious problem that I discovered and proved to exist beyond a shadow of a doubt while a PC-BSD beta tester. The response was complete silence for weeks, although they did slate a change in the next version to be released. That's when I made my move to FreeBSD. OJ was there at the time IIRC.

Then again, that was when it was PC-BSD and things might be different now in TrueOS, but not from what I see in the post by Dan MacDonald.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 23, 2017)

Lol, yeah, I thought PC-BSD would be helpful in getting into *BSD. It wasn't really. It did come with KDE pre-installed and that's about it from my perspective. I can do that easily myself just like in Linux, the only thing hard about it is waiting for all the dependencies to download on a slow connection. I really have nothing bad to say about PC-BSD. The head developer was very helpful to me on occasion. In the end though, I didn't see any point in that distro, at least for me. So, I just went to FreeBSD, and all's good for me now.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 23, 2017)

OJ said:


> Lol, yeah, I thought PC-BSD would be helpful in getting into *BSD. It wasn't really.



It was for me and that is one good thing I have to say about it. I never did like the .pbi, Push Button Installer, system or AppCafe and taught myself to use ports. They even asked me why I used ports instead of their installer.

But the problem I discovered put everyone using it at risk, and at the time they were promoting it for use as a server, which was a disaster waiting to happen. I'm sure they have corrected that by now though.


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## aimeec1995 (Jul 23, 2017)

It is broken garbage. 
It only worked on 1 of 3 of my computers and even then not very well and there is no 32 bit variant.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 23, 2017)

aimeec1995 said:


> It only worked on 1 of 3 of my computers and even then not very well


That doesn't sound like a problem with the OS.


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## aimeec1995 (Jul 24, 2017)

OJ said:


> That doesn't sound like a problem with the OS.



Failure to boot/install on computers that otherwise work fine?


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## aragats (Jul 24, 2017)

islamux said:


> vesa driver dosn't work for my lenovo labtop T430
> intel driver not work well


I'm using FreeBSD 11 in my T430 for almost 2 years, and Intel driver perfectly works!


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 24, 2017)

aragats said:


> I'm using FreeBSD 11 in my T430 for almost 2 years, and Intel driver perfectly works!



Same goes for my Thinkpad T61 and X61.


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## islamux (Jul 24, 2017)

aragats said:


> I'm using FreeBSD 11 in my T430 for almost 2 years, and Intel driver perfectly works!


in my case i have a problem in backlight it's not satisfy me , it's not full claire like in arch linux


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## aragats (Jul 24, 2017)

What's wrong with the backlight, islamux ? Too dim?
5 years ago I used Archlinux on the same T430, don't see any difference in backlight.
What's your desktop environment? I don't use any, just X+dwm (x11-wm/dwm).
If you don't have a clear picture maybe your resolution is wrong, have you checked it? (`$ xrandr`)


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## islamux (Jul 24, 2017)

aragats said:


> What's wrong with the backlight, islamux ? Too dim?
> 5 years ago I used Archlinux on the same T430, don't see any difference in backlight.
> What's your desktop environment? I don't use any, just X+dwm (x11-wm/dwm).
> If you don't have a clear picture maybe your resolution is wrong, have you checked it? (`$ xrandr`)


i can control the backlight  by xbrightness but still not well i can't use the exact word but the light when i move the screen down or up becomes darker or lighter it's not stable the above of screen dark down of the screen light.
sorry i can't express well in english.




```
xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1600 x 900, maximum 32767 x 32767
LVDS1 connected 1600x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 310mm x 170mm
   1600x900      60.01*+  40.00
   1368x768      60.00
   1280x720      60.00
   1024x768      60.00
   1024x576      60.00
   960x540       60.00
   800x600       60.32    56.25
   864x486       60.00
   800x450       60.00
   640x480       59.94
   720x405       60.00
   640x360       60.00
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
```
i'm using xfce , openbox

```
pciconf -lv | grep -3 display
vgapci0@pci0:0:2:0:   class=0x030000 card=0x21f317aa chip=0x01668086 rev=0x09 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = '3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller'
    class      = display
    subclass   = VGA
xhci0@pci0:0:20:0:   class=0x0c0330 card=0x21f317aa chip=0x1e318086 rev=0x04 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
```


*T430 lenovo Enchanced Experience 3 *
thanx* aragats *for your interest.


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## aragats (Jul 24, 2017)

The resolution is correct.
You should not use `xbrightness` (I don't even have it installed), the brightness can be controlled directly by pressing Fn+F8/F9, it works in console without X as well.
Do you have in your /boot/loader.conf the following line?
	
	



```
i915kms_load="YES"
```


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## Wozzeck.Live (Jul 24, 2017)

One can only prays for success of TrueOS. As a "mass market" targeted flavor, if TrueOS can make grow the community using FreeBSD as a base system it's better for everybody, because only a significant growing community of users could make change the attitude of hardware makers like Broadcom, which as this day doesn't open source some firmware code of some chipset, so no free driver can be developed and they really don't care of FreeBSD.

As a FreeBSD user I was not so much interested in TrueOS, because I want a total control of my system.
I have tried PC-BSD (former name of TrueOS, or more exactly PC-BSD was used for Desktop flavor, and TrueOS for the server flavor, they have decided some months ago to merge the names and use now only TrueOS), but this was a disaster.

Possibly, ZFS sucks on my old hardware, this was terribly slow, perhaps 50% slower than FreeBSD
I understand that TrueOS focuses on AMD64, this is a question of human resources to assume several branches, but I don't understand why they force the user to set up a ZFS system. For a desktop system, moreover for a desktop which doesn't use pseudo raid mode at all having just one drive, I am not sure that ZFS brings something essential versus UFS, more flexible because better recognized by number of third party tools. If ZFS was so essential I assume that OpenBSD would have also implemented ZFS... as far as I know this is not the case, so I am not sure that ZFS brings a performance jump. This is far more reliable and interesting in big data strategy for industry class NAS, but this is not the question here... we just speak of a desktop, eventually with a little NAS.

But for another curious reason I get interested again in TrueOS.... not as a stable system, but as an experimental system, so the contrary of the basic philosophy of this flavor targeting mass market and so stability should be one essential point.

Since few months they switched to the current branch of FreeBSD. In fact I was always interested in having one of my system set up in FreeBSD Current just to be informed of the future directions of FreeBSD. But I was reticent as FreeBSD current doesn't offer a simple way of updating the base system, for example in case of security issues. To me FreeBSD current has always been an eventual candidate for desktop use to take profit of last developments in drivers area so with a better support of hardware. For server, I would keep using the release branch in any case.
But inherent unstability of current branch was a major issue. I tried some months ago to install from scratch a FreeBSD current... a lot of strange problems related to the kernel, impossible to activate my network connection... I gave up.

I have been surprised when the decision to switch was made by TrueOS, this is a challenge, but if the staff succeeds in bringing to the end user a "stable current" branch, so it is interesting for me as it solves my main problems : stability, being informed of critical updates, and being able to update easily without launching a "make world".

So I will probably give a second chance to TrueOS, hoping also that last ZFS revisions won't suck again on my system.
But for my servers I want to keep the total control, building the ports as I want with my own options, deactivating/adding some components to my admninistrative desktop, choosing my favorite firewall ... so TrueOS server is useless from my point of view, for Desktop let's see...


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 25, 2017)

Wozzeck.Live said:


> One can only prays for success of TrueOS. As a "mass market" targeted flavor, if TrueOS can make grow the community using FreeBSD as a base system it's better for everybody, . . .


I completely agree. We should wish them well and support them when possible.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 25, 2017)

While my comments may have been somewhat less than amicable, I concur. I got my start using PC-BSD and if it serves to introduce people to FreeBSD I'm all for it.


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## sko (Jul 25, 2017)

aimeec1995 said:


> It is broken garbage.
> It only worked on 1 of 3 of my computers and even then not very well and there is no 32 bit variant.





OJ said:


> That doesn't sound like a problem with the OS.



Indeed - most problems I've encountered with TrueOS "not working" (=failing to boot) are due to broken UEFI-Implementations. We have sereval types and generations of client PCs here at the company and by far the most annoyingly broken EFI implementations can be found on ASRock systems/boards, closely followed by acer. Some of them won't even find any OS when booting in full-EFI mode; some can *only* boot from USB in EFI mode and some are just horribly unstable in EFI mode...  Reverting back to legacy mode works for almost all of these systems, except for a few ones with even more broken secure boot.
So far I've only encountered 2 vendors where EFI "just works": Supermicro and Intel. Intel NUCs are the least complicated clients I had to set up yet - they just work for EFI-booting out-of-the-box without any modification to the default settings.


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## islamux (Jul 25, 2017)

Wozzeck.Live said:


> One can only prays for success of TrueOS. As a "mass market" targeted flavor, if TrueOS can make grow the community using FreeBSD as a base system it's better for everybody, because only a significant growing community of users could make change the attitude of hardware makers like Broadcom, which as this day doesn't open source some firmware code of some chipset, so no free driver can be developed and they really don't care of FreeBSD.
> 
> As a FreeBSD user I was not so much interested in TrueOS, because I want a total control of my system.
> I have tried PC-BSD (former name of TrueOS, or more exactly PC-BSD was used for Desktop flavor, and TrueOS for the server flavor, they have decided some months ago to merge the names and use now only TrueOS), but this was a disaster.
> ...



I'm with you.
i was surprised when knew that TrueOS on FreeBSD 12.... maybe i want the latest but ... the stabilty is more important


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## aimeec1995 (Jul 25, 2017)

FreeBSD as a desktop will never take off with trash like TrueOS at the helm.


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## islamux (Jul 25, 2017)

aragats said:


> The resolution is correct.
> You should not use `xbrightness` (I don't even have it installed), the brightness can be controlled directly by pressing Fn+F8/F9, it works in console without X as well.
> Do you have in your /boot/loader.conf the following line?
> 
> ...


Oh, thanks, my friend aragats you solved the problem that made me crazy 
It works like a charm


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## islamux (Jul 25, 2017)

aragats said:


> I'm using FreeBSD 11 in my T430 for almost 2 years, and Intel driver perfectly works!


i continue my case in this post 
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/61702/#post-355728


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jul 25, 2017)

aimeec1995 said:


> FreeBSD as a desktop will never take off with trash like TrueOS at the helm.



Kris Moore founded PC-BSD, is at the helm of of TrueOS and a pretty smart guy. Ken Moore is on staff, too, and I've spoken with him a number of times in the PC-BSD forums IIRC. Dru Lavigne is on the team and she has all my respect.

I'm sure they'll get things straightened out despite the shortcomings. Ragging on TrueOS isn't going to accomplish anything.

Some people simply are not sufficiently technically inclined to jump from Windows directly to FreeBSD and PC-BSD/TrueOS can possibly give them the skills and confidence to do so. I speak from personal experience in that regard.

TrueOS isn't for everybody and why I'm here, but PC-BSD is how I got here.


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## rjohn (Jul 25, 2017)

this is true i am a windows user and last month started making a desktop freebsd,not an easy task,i've tested trueos last week on another pc and its so easy and friendly for everybody to do it and having a desktop pc for everyday use.


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## Dan MacDonald (Jul 28, 2017)

I posted my review of TrueOS from earlier in this thread on their Discourse forum and it generated quite a lot of discussion and thankfully spurred the devs into replying to some of my tickets.

I very much believe there is a place for TrueOS or something like it but unless it gets a huge and continued cash / manpower injection, I find it unlikely it will ever compete in marketshare with macOS or Windows. Look at where Linux is after 25 years which has at least 1 billion dollar plus company dedicated solely to developing and promoting it. However, I don't think the team have any delusions of toppling Windows and macOS any time soon.

I have opened a few github tickets against TrueOS since my last posting here, Don't use the PCDM Change Vide Driver option - it will break your xorg.conf. I believe this is the main reasonn for the high rate of installation failures, because the installer triggers this code.

I think ZFS is a killer feature for any OS because it allows trouble free upgrades. System upgrades create a whole new boot env so you just revert to your old BE if anything goes wrong. Windows has offered a crappy version of this with its system restore since at least 2001 with XP but now ZFS has perfected system and file rollbacks with boot envs and snapshots. It has irked the hell out of me for decades that nearly all Linux distros still have no good solution for this . Software disaster recovery hasn't even been an afterthought in Linux land until very recently.

I would encourage everyone to give TrueOS another go in a year or two. If they can address the issues I've highlighted over the past couple of months by that time I think we will have an impressive FreeBSD based desktop OS.


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## sko (Jul 28, 2017)

Dan MacDonald said:


> Look at where Linux is after 25 years which has at least 1 billion dollar plus company dedicated solely to developing and promoting it. However, I don't think the team have any delusions of toppling Windows and macOS any time soon.



Most companies putting real money and manpower into linux development are geared towards the enterprise and support market - it just makes no sense for them (from a business/financial standpoint) to improve or promote Linux for the average home desktop user. 
I think the current development led by RedHat with systemd to streamline and "optimize" Linux for the desktop doesn't need any commentary - it's like watching the Benny Hill show.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 29, 2017)

Funny how "markets" and "market share" always comes up. To me that's like having a discussion about Trump here. It's socially topical, but in bad taste for a forum like this. ymmv


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