# DesktopBSD



## sk8harddiefast (Feb 16, 2015)

http://www.desktopbsd.net/
Is back at least one year but never heard anyone to use it!
Why?
PS: I miss so much KDE 3.5. It was the best Desktop Environment ever and Trinity desktop seems not going very well.


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## yggdrasil (Feb 17, 2015)

Of course not, it was dead the last 5 or so years. And then they wanted to revive it, only we never heard anything again. That was, what, 2 years ago? So if they now have the skeleton of a new website, well that's nice and all, but I'll hold my applause until I have the new iso on disk


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## sk8harddiefast (Feb 17, 2015)

Why, we haven't port Trinity Desktop on FreeBSD yet? What is Mate Desktop to Gnome 3? The same is Trinity Desktop to KDE4. A fork of keep in life the old good Desktop trying to solve the broken libs etc.


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## BSDBernd (Feb 17, 2015)

This I got from the forum of DesktopBSD:

-----------------------
Urgent Need for More Contributors
Call for Help!
For the moment, the lack of Manpower could keep us away from DesktopBSD 2.0 release. However, we would like to announce the urgent need for these roles:
Developers
Project administrators
Website administrators
Writers and other.
A description of these positions can be read on page Team http://desktopbsd.bravesites.com/team of the http://desktopbsd.bravesites.com Unofficial DesktopBSDsite.
We need people to commit for 1-5 and more years support and not just join for few months then leave the project.
We would be comfortable enough to submit an application to the Technical Board in order to have a DesktopBSD 2.0 release when we will have volunteers who can actively contribute and help us.
If you have the required experience and skills or if you know someone who has, please contact us directly or share this request in your social media and among your friends.
---------------------------

Somebody must help them!

Edit: I realize now that this was a relatively old post 
Edit2: So this is a more recent description of the situation concerning DesktopBSD:
Here a quote from the site admin, dated Feb 2, 2015:

It's not laziness. The project used to be run by a few German guys who completely quit and let the domain expire. I bought the domain after noticing it was getting traffic, got the website and forums back up and started recruiting a new team. I am not an OS developer and have lots of other projects, so the best I can do is support the volunteers and keep the site running.

We have several competent people now who want to help, but they're not very experienced in developing OS's. I don't even think they were able to locate the most recent source code. As soon as someone who knows what he or she is doing comes along and can manage the project, things will either pick up or not, but I'm not taking the site down.

Site: http://www.desktopbsd.net/forums/threads/the-future-of-the-desktopbsd.31/#post-1288


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## tankist02 (Feb 18, 2015)

Why not merge DesktopBSD with GhostBSD? Their approach is similar, so why not pool resources?


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## sk8harddiefast (Feb 18, 2015)

GhostBSD started from a member of this forum.
DesktopBSD started along time ago.
Maybe I am completely wrong because I didn't use any of them but I think that they have different approach.
What I mean. DesktopBSD use his own GUI tools. From the other side GhostBSD just collected all GUI packages from here and made FreeBSD more easier
Wifimgr: http://www.freshports.org/net-mgmt/wifimgr/
bxpkg: http://www.freshports.org/ports-mgmt/bxpkg/ etc, they all exist on FreeBSD ports.
Also GhostBSD uses Mate Desktop Environment.
I think that DesktopBSD uses pure KDE 3.5. Not even Trinity!
Maybe both of them, want an easier FreeBSD but the concept of HOW TO make an Easier FreeBSD is different.
On the other side PCBSD lead on this path. Personally I don't like PCBSD


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## zwieblum (Mar 3, 2015)

DesktopBSD is very nice, but it breaks when I try to upgrade.
Could you help porting TDE to FreeBSD?


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## retrogamer (Mar 3, 2015)

sk8harddiefast said:


> GhostBSD started from a member of this forum.
> DesktopBSD started along time ago.
> Maybe I am completely wrong because I didn't use any of them but I think that they have different approach.
> What I mean. DesktopBSD use his own GUI tools. From the other side GhostBSD just collected all GUI packages from here and made FreeBSD more easier
> ...


I just wanted to clarify one thing about GhostBSD.  ericturgeon is the developer of that FreeBSD derivative, and he creates the unique GhostBSD GUI packages, he just makes them available as ports for us vanilla FreeBSD users (which is much appreciated by me, at least).  I don't think DesktopBSD is actively developed anymore, the better option would probably be for people to get involved with GhostBSD and help Eric out, if they have the time/knowledge.  I use GhostBSD as a Live USB on occasion (which you can't do anymore with PC-BSD) to test out how well older hardware will run FreeBSD as a desktop without doing a complete install, and for a one man effort it's very impressive.

EDIT:  Just to give one example, you can track the development of networkmgr on GitHub - https://github.com/GhostBSD/networkmgr


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## sk8harddiefast (Mar 5, 2015)

Can someone "upload" networkmgr to ports? Supports Wifi too!!!
FreeBSD need this!!!


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## retrogamer (Mar 5, 2015)

I just wanted to mention, I was referring to "ports" in the generic sense.  You can try networkmgr by installing devel/git (or the binary via pkgng) and doing:

```
git clone https://github.com/GhostBSD/networkmgr.git
```
Then install as if it were a traditional port and you weren't using ports-mgmt/portmaster

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember Eric said he would make a proper port available when it came out of beta, though that was a long time ago.  Maybe he will chime in at some point.


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## malco_2001 (Mar 6, 2015)

I was able to locate some of the original source code.  I've posted it here:


```
https://github.com/pkgdemon/desktopbsd-tools
```


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## sk8harddiefast (Mar 6, 2015)

> DesktopBSD is very nice, but it breaks when I try to upgrade.
> Could you help porting TDE to FreeBSD?



All my efforts to port things went to trash. I never made it. Not even with simple apps with one or two dependencies!
But I always "push" (with the good meaning) the community to port things. If TDE was on ports, I was leaving gnome 3 for sure. KDE 3.5 was the best DE ever made.
Gnome3 is amazing and very unified but I missed KDE 3.5 so much!


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## sidetone (Mar 7, 2015)

What about merging GhostBSD and MidnightBSD? Are they too different?


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## retrogamer (Mar 7, 2015)

sidetone said:


> What about merging GhostBSD and MidnightBSD? Are they too different?


MidnightBSD claims to be a fork of FreeBSD, so I'm assuming that's the case.  I've never actually heard of anyone using MidnightBSD nor have I bothered myself, I really don't understand what the purpose of it is, to be honest.


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## ASX (Sep 1, 2016)

Just earned the first ban in decades of multiple forums life:
http://www.desktopbsd.net/forums/threads/desktopbsd-infrastructure.793/page-3#post-1583

as for why, please judge yourself.

EDIT: the whole thread has been deleted just minutes ago ... I will recap a bit of info:
a) I pointed out that EchoD (the website admin and pretended to be desktopbsd manager) is completely unknown and his identity hidden behind privacyguardian.org

b) that his website dosn't comply with its own privacy policy, because effectively it is not possible to unsubscribe from the forum, then I asked via PM and publicily to remove my forum account and that was when I earned the ban.

c) I was requested to join the development team from AngelescuO, formerly the project manager in charge, which didn't happened, and two weeks later I retired volountarily.

d) I pointed out an evident disconnection between "management" (him) and the "development" Team.


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## AngelescuO (Sep 2, 2016)

Hi

I am AngelescuO mentioned above.

Indeed EchoD has deleted an entire thread in desktopbsd.net forums.

We try to restart DesktopBSD project.
Please read http://desktopbsd.boards.net/thread/2/desktopbsd-restart .
Since we plan a DesktopBSD 2.0 version we need also team members and of course new users.
Please join new desktopbsd forum in http://desktopbsd.boards.net  
Please visit our's website too: www.desktopbsd.weebly.com  to see latest news.
We are also in #desktopbsd channel irc.freenode.net server.

Thank you.


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## ericbsd (Sep 2, 2016)

There is a temporary website.
Forum:
http://desktopbsd.boards.net/
Website:
http://desktopbsd.weebly.com
Test verision 2.0 
http://desktopbsd.weebly.com/downloads.html


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## AngelescuO (Sep 2, 2016)

Why fork?
As I know DesktopBSD and GhostBSD are not FreeBSD forks.
Both use FreeBSD as base and have some custom packages .
Thank you .


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## SporkVillain (Sep 2, 2016)

Yeah I'm not sure what the purpose of the forks is either. Kind of new to the community but, FreeBSD works just fine on many desktop environments.


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## ASX (Sep 2, 2016)

SporkVillain said:


> Yeah I'm not sure what the purpose of the forks is either. Kind of new to the community but, FreeBSD works just fine on many desktop environments.



The purpose behind such fork/customize ... etc .. is because we *try* to avoid to our users issues like those described here, just as an example: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/57482/

We have the perception that the user experience could be a little more smooth, and of course the "fork" definition doesn't fit.

Additionally, we provide a live graphics media, which is also useful to test if the hw is supported, without the need to install.


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## SporkVillain (Sep 2, 2016)

Well, I think that largely depends on the purpose of the system. What I was saying as that I don't understand why *Desktop* based forks are a thing. I'm not saying they are a bad thing just that I don't understand why they are so desired. 

pfSense is (in my opinion) a different use case, with a different purpose. Same goes for something like freeNas.


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## BeOurGuest (Sep 3, 2016)

FreeBSD as a Desktop is (such as GhostBSD) for those of us who are new to BSD and have short term memories and cannot recall all the commands (by memory) needed to install a desktop shell.  There are those of us who seek out a new OS to try something new or to get away from whatever OS we're currently using.


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## AngelescuO (Sep 6, 2016)

Hello BSD community,

New test DesktopBSD-2.0  ISOS are available with: KDE , LXDE and Gnome.
Take a look to Downloads link https://sourceforge.net/projects/desktopbsd.desktopbsd.p/files/ISO/DesktopBSD 2.0/
 Source code and files are in  Peter Hofer (original DesktopBSD developer) SourceForge DesktopBSD  repo https://sourceforge.net/projects/desktopbsd/

DesktopBSD announcements are in http://desktopbsd.boards.net/board/10/announcements

Thank you


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## ASX (Sep 6, 2016)

AngelescuO said:


> New test DesktopBSD-2.0 ISOS are available with: KDE , LXDE and Gnome.


and Lumina too.


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## morbit (Sep 6, 2016)

Original DesktopBSD based on 6.X FreeBSD was useful for me when I needed preconfigured desktop running promptly. DesktopBSD tools were a nice addition to it too.


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## AngelescuO (Sep 12, 2016)

Hello,

We have also a lxde HardeneBsd based iso under Files section from DesktopBSD Next section.
 https://sourceforge.net/projects/desktopbsd/
or more easy 
All isos (FreeBSD and HardenedBSD based) are under https://sourceforge.net/projects/desktopbsd.desktopbsd.p/files/ISO/

Thank you.


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## zwieblum (Oct 9, 2016)

I just tried the new ISOs with KDE. While the FreeBSD version works on real hardware, the HardenedBSD versions fail at setting up X11. I tried it on T60/T61 and X61, Intel and AMD graphiccard.

KDE works nice - way better than PC-BSD - but it it's KDE 4 (could have spared the bandwidth if I knew that before).


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## da1 (Oct 10, 2016)

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/41396/#post-229950


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