# What Do You All Think About Project Trident?



## RedPhoenix (Jun 4, 2019)

It says "FreeBSD questions", and since Trident is a direct offshoot... Well, it seems like they're very dedicated to the project.  Sorry if this is in the wrong place.  Thanks for the replies guys.


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## shkhln (Jun 4, 2019)

What exactly do you want to know?


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## RedPhoenix (Jun 4, 2019)

shkhln said:


> What exactly do you want to know?


Oh, sorry.  I was just wondering if you think they're going in a good direction, and it's cool how they put Telegram into it by default. But I kinda wish they also kept up PC-BSD too.


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## ralphbsz (Jun 4, 2019)

Let's see.  As far as I can see it's TrueOS with desktop modifications.  TrueOS in turn is nothing but FreeBSD with a little bit of extra cosmetics applied.

It promises "No advertisements. No tracking. No reporting of “metrics” on your computer activity."  Well, my FreeBSD installation also has no advertisements, tracking, or reporting of metrics ... it is a server.  Neither does any of my MacOS installations which I use for desktops.  Now, I'm 100% sure that the browsers that I run under MacOS will do all that stuff, exactly as designed and intended.  If you use the web, then the way you use the web will be measured.  And if web providers give you free web pages, you have to tolerate that some of the stuff you see on those free web pages happen to be ads.  In any case, the empty promise of "no ads, no tracking" has little to do with the OS, a lot with the browser (you can use browsers or plugins which try to prevent ads or tracking, usually with mixed results).  For that I don't need a new distribution.

For a server user, it is completely irrelevant.  For a desktop user ... it seems to be a mix of grandiose claims and exaggeration.

I'll continue to run FreeBSD, thank you.


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## zirias@ (Jun 4, 2019)

To me, this project is unnecessary, with maybe the exception of the lumina desktop if they reach a good milestone 2.0 eventually -- it would be nice to have a desktop that's more compact and better integrated with BSD than the plasma5 desktop I use right now -- but we will see. And of course, this will be available in the FreeBSD ports as well 

For me personally, I'm very happy with FreeBSD, driving my server with jails and virtual machines, a desktop PC and a Notebook with everything I need, I don't know what exactly Trident could do better _for me_.

Still I think it might be valuable to "less techy" users, who might replace their Desktop Windows installation with Ubuntu, but are given a similar alternative in the BSD world. At least, that's what I assume. I never tried installing anything around TrueOS, but I assume one goal is to deliver sensible default configs for anything "out of the box", which would indeed help these users.


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## shkhln (Jun 4, 2019)

RedPhoenix said:


> if you think they're going in a good direction



I'll keep it short.

Project Trident has only a tiny 2 person team, it will never going to deliver the promised polished desktop experience simply due to this fact. Same for TrueOS and whatever they are advertising.
iXsystems actually now half-heartedly tries to distance themselves from Trident, for example see https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/welcome-to-the-ix-community.76635/#post-532702. Quite funny, IMO.
Typical Lumina source code.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 4, 2019)

RedPhoenix said:


> It says "FreeBSD questions", and since Trident is a direct offshoot...


You're not allowed to ask technical support type questions here. If you want to discuss Trident, that's fine.


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## RedPhoenix (Jun 4, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> You're not allowed to ask technical support type questions here. If you want to discuss Trident, that's fine.


Yeah, I know.  Sorry, I have Autism, so what seems obvious in what I say is obvious to me, but not to others. I find it to be pretty cool myself, though I wish it supported UFS2.


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## RedPhoenix (Jun 4, 2019)

shkhln said:


> I'll keep it short.
> 
> Project Trident has only a tiny 2 person team, it will never going to deliver the promised polished desktop experience simply due to this fact. Same for TrueOS and whatever they are advertising.
> iXsystems actually now half-heartedly tries to distance themselves from Trident, for example see https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/welcome-to-the-ix-community.76635/#post-532702. Quite funny, IMO.
> Typical Lumina source code.


Yeah, it seems that way. They're really dedicated though in spite of the sheer amount of work involved, and that truly inspires me. I want to help contribute to it, and by extension, FreeBSD. I've been studying various Programming Languages for about 5 years now, and all I've been doing is making my own Programs and twiddling my thumbs, lol.  I just want to give back for once. EDIT: I checked out the Lumina.cpp Code, and I don't see any goto's... Seems functional to me, and when I used Lumina, it was pretty much as stable as XFCE.


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## RedPhoenix (Jun 4, 2019)

ralphbsz said:


> Let's see.  As far as I can see it's TrueOS with desktop modifications.  TrueOS in turn is nothing but FreeBSD with a little bit of extra cosmetics applied.
> 
> It promises "No advertisements. No tracking. No reporting of “metrics” on your computer activity."  Well, my FreeBSD installation also has no advertisements, tracking, or reporting of metrics ... it is a server.  Neither does any of my MacOS installations which I use for desktops.  Now, I'm 100% sure that the browsers that I run under MacOS will do all that stuff, exactly as designed and intended.  If you use the web, then the way you use the web will be measured.  And if web providers give you free web pages, you have to tolerate that some of the stuff you see on those free web pages happen to be ads.  In any case, the empty promise of "no ads, no tracking" has little to do with the OS, a lot with the browser (you can use browsers or plugins which try to prevent ads or tracking, usually with mixed results).  For that I don't need a new distribution.
> 
> ...


Yeah, it makes sense when you put it that way. I'm really curious about OS development though, and how it's wrought with sheer difficulty, if not in modifying a few cosmetics, then porting Software over when people say "Oh, it's on x OS, so don't bother with *BSD, since it doesn't have it". I have seen people level that argument against the BSD community (not to mention that it's supposedly "dying"), and that really frustrates me. It's a big world, and to me, multibooting and experimenting, as well as viewing Source Code is a huge passion of mine.  My dream is to contribute to Open Source in a big way, and if I can't do that before my time comes, then there truly was no giving back on my part.  Like yourself, I run various Operating Systems. I just get all these crazy ideas of what cool things I can do with Programming and Computers, just like the legendary MIT Tech Model Rail Club.


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