# On the desktop: FreeBSD vs PC-BSD vs Debian



## Patrick Bär (Jul 19, 2015)

Good day everyone,
My name is Patrick and I would like to ask the question, what your opinions are about this topic.

I started to use BSD about 15 years ago, used FreeBSD and OpenBSD for servers in business. For some years I have stopped using it as I was not into system administration any more.

The last years I treated Unix/Linux like wine. Every couple of months I told myself "Patrick, a decent man has to use it". Then I tried, realised it sucks and went back to what I had before. I am now in need to use another laptop and suddenly realised that the last Linux I successfully ran for years was PC-BSD 

Long story short, I need an OS for my new (Dell) laptop. I have read through the web about current version and differences between FreeBSD and PC-BSD, yet did not find the answer I was looking for.

I understand this:

FreeBSD - Basic system, nothing new

PC-BSD - Has a bit of an overhead like KDE and such (I prefer slim managers like XFCE) bit basically stays a FreeBSD when it comes to everything apart from packet-manager and initial configuration

Debian - Is my favorite Linux. With any other distribution I had ridiculous problems like programs freezing the system, crashing Xorg and other funny things. Ubuntu is plain rubbish, even worse than Suse and it's YAST manager. Fedora is like a giant beta-version of everything.

So my problem question is, what do I gain by using Debian rather than PC-BSD? And what do I gain by using PC-BSD over FreeBSD? And vice versa of course 

This is NOT an invitation for another nice OS war. I know about the usual things that OS 1 can and OS 2 and the other whole enchilada. My intention is purely the desktop point of view. For example, Skype is a terror for FreeBSD, how's PC-BSD doing at the moment? Linux handles it pretty well at the moment. Are there any differences besides the package stuff and configuration between FreeBSD and PC-BSD? And so on.

Looking forward to your opinions!


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## abishai (Jul 19, 2015)

Using PC-BSD is practically means you use Ubuntu. I tried it when I started to learn FreeBSD to learn how to setup one thing or another - don't make my mistake, especially of you are familiar with unix. The only gain you'll receive is the answer - 'yes, it can run on my box', after that, I suggest to discard it and setup FreeBSD.
PS. Skype works on 11-CURRENT.


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## Oko (Jul 19, 2015)

You can use the Skype from your smart phone. Microsoft will kill Linux version soon as well. FreeBSD runs Skype via Linux emulation. That is a game of cat and mouse. I think FreeBSD will benefit from removing stupid emulation. Going back to original question. 

PCBSD if you need quick kitchen sink installation and your hardware can handle ZFS. Vanilla FreeBSD for light instalation and tinkering with OS. Debian if you need Linux and don't care for ZFS.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 19, 2015)

Well, thank you for your replies and your opinion. 

Both of you basically tell me to use FreeBSD and not PC-BSD, but for what reason? What's the disadvantage of PC-BSD?


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## Beastie7 (Jul 19, 2015)

The PC-BSD project insists on putting existing FreeBSD features inside pointless wrappers, causing things to break all the time. Just look at the forums - complaints everywhere. The AppCafe itself has a bajillion different dependencies, peoples stuff breaks after updates, buggy utilities, apps not working, etc. It's pointless, and it's all C++ (ugh).

I would just install Vanilla FreeBSD with a fresh install of GNOME or Lumina when it's done. I wish they would just merge the pc-bsd-utils into Lumina and just ship Lumina as a layer on-top of FreeBSD, call it the Lumina Project (or whatever) and be done with it.


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## juiced (Jul 19, 2015)

PC-BSD comes loaded with applications and several FreeBSD features enabled. 
If you require those features and apps its not a bad thing. But if not you'll spend a lot of time disabling and uninstalling.

Personally I only install/enable what I need. Thus bare bones installs of either FreeBSD or OpenBSD are ideal.
If I need linux Debian Jessie has fairly recent drivers, lots of apps, runs well without systemd and can use XFS.

You mentioned _"New Dell Laptop"_
FreeBSD is lacking Intel Haswell based integrated graphics drivers.
Driver availability might make the decision for you.
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics

Both Debian Jessie and OpenBSD have these drivers.


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## protocelt (Jul 19, 2015)

I think the better question here is "Which of the mentioned operating systems best support my hardware and have the features and applications I need to use?" Just asking which operating system is better for me without any context is too subjective and can have very differing opinions based on the person replying. FreeBSD isn't the right operating system for everyone nor is any other operating system in existence. A few questions for the OP:

Do you need your hardware to be fully supported including suspend/resume features?
Do you require file system compatibility across different operating system platforms?
Which desktop features and applications do you need/require?
Would you enjoy digging in and learning to use a new operating system or do you just want it "to work"?
I think answering some or all of these questions may get you more focused/objective replies.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 19, 2015)

juiced: No Haswell, so the decision is still open!

protocelt: These are exactly NOT the questions I cannot answer by myself  

Beastie7 has brought up some good points with packet management. That's indeed a reason why I thought about PC-BSD. FreeBSD disappointed me a bit when I tried to install a couple of linux applications and went from "You need linux_base-f10, deinstall linux_base-c6 and all depending applications" to vice versa. Thunderbird did not install properly. What about flash? Oh well, I will need to dig deeper.


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## protocelt (Jul 19, 2015)

My apologies if my post came across as abrasive. No disrespect intended 

PCBSD isn't any better at package management than FreeBSD. They both use the same package management system; pkg(8), the difference being, PCBSD developed a pretty front-end GUI utility to make it easier for the average user to use and understand and FreeBSD offers the ports tree to compile your own software the way you see fit. The packages between the two are exactly the same including how well they work except PCBSD's package repository is compiled with workstation/desktop users in mind. If you prefer the command line FreeBSD might be a better choice, otherwise PCBSD works just as well. FreeBSD offers the tools to build your own system exactly the way you want it while PCBSD offers you a ready made desktop and for the most part assumes your going to be using their tools to manage your system. I guess it's somewhat similar though not exactly the same to the differences between Linux distros such as Gentoo and Ubuntu. They're really just two separate roads to the same destination IMHO.

One more thing to note: PCBSD uses Grub with ZFS integration so what's nice is you can have ZFS on root and boot from UEFI. FreeBSD's gptzfsboot(8) doesn't yet support booting with UEFI.


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## Oko (Jul 19, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> Well, thank you for your replies and your opinion.
> 
> Both of you basically tell me to use FreeBSD and not PC-BSD, but for what reason? What's the disadvantage of PC-BSD?


I didn't tell you not to use PC-BSD. Quite on the contrary. I personally use TrueOS on my servers instead of vanilla FreeBSD. Having
nice installer due to the following

1. Installer (ZFS on the root)
2. boot environments/snapshots (beadm)
3. update manager
4. Life Preserver (management tool for ZFS snapshots and replication)
5. the Warden (Jail management)

Now Warden will be replaced soon with *iocage*. FreeBSD installer now supports ZFS on the root and have decent update manager. Life Preserver has some annoying bugs and beadm is available in ports. Still having smartmontools, syslog-ng and bunch of other stuff useful to admins installed and pre-configured is really nice. 

Once you start using desktop having 5 desktop environments installed just to override them with my beloved cwm is not really something that I want to do. On another hand having CUPS preconfigured and bunch of similar desktop stuff is not the worse thing on the world.


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## Oko (Jul 19, 2015)

juiced said:


> PC-BSD comes loaded with applications and several FreeBSD features enabled.
> If you require those features and apps its not a bad thing. But if not you'll spend a lot of time disabling and uninstalling.
> 
> Personally I only install/enable what I need. Thus bare bones installs of either FreeBSD or OpenBSD are ideal.
> ...


What file system does Jessie use for root partition? If it is Ext2 or even 4 it would be no go in my book. DragonFly BSD has excellent support for Haswell which could be ported to FreeBSD.

The biggest problem I personally see is the lack of developers who are actually using FreeBSD on their own desktops. That is why use see the project like DragonFly BSD which has two dozen developers having much more usable desktop than FreeBSD which has couple hundreds of developers.


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## Oko (Jul 19, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> Beastie7 has brought up some good points with packet management. That's indeed a reason why I thought about PC-BSD. FreeBSD disappointed me a bit when I tried to install a couple of linux applications and went from "You need linux_base-f10, deinstall linux_base-c6 and all depending applications" to vice versa. Thunderbird did not install properly. What about flash? Oh well, I will need to dig deeper.


Flash is dead on the Linux as well. Really if you need Linux specific stuff you would save lots of time using Linux instead of getting frustrated with FreeBSD emulation layer.


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## hashime (Jul 20, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> So my problem question is, what do I gain by using Debian rather than PC-BSD? And what do I gain by using PC-BSD over FreeBSD? And vice versa of course



With Debian you would get:
Depending on your hardware you may get better driver support.
You get working fn keys, adjustable brightness, multifinger touchgestures on your touchpad (if that's important to you), less headache with wifi, better battery life, haswell support, suspend/hibernate, skype, a working update/upgrade utility(compared to PC-BSD), a better cli package manager(very subjective of course), http://packages.debian.org, about a twice as big software repository, chrome with its updated flashversion (does chromium have that too?), http://wiki.debian.org, way faster install (not really important), way faster boot time (not really important either), a bigger community (just speaking quantity), more HowTos/guides on the web, kvm.

Whether that's important for you is up to you. It really depends what you wanna do with the Laptop. If you want to play video games, none of the mentioned Operatingsystems is a good choice. If you just want to surf the web it really does not matter much.


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## Oko (Jul 20, 2015)

hashime said:


> With Debian you would get:a working update/upgrade utility(compared to PC-BSD), a better cli package manager(very subjective of course), http://packages.debian.org, about a twice as big software repository, chrome with its updated flashversion (does chromium have that too?), http://wiki.debian.org, way faster install (not really important), way faster boot time (not really important either), a bigger community (just speaking quantity), more HowTos/guides on the web, kvm.


I don't know about PC-BSD but `pc-updatemanager` works as expected on TrueOS (server version). I will concur that it might not work well with GUI. beadm(1), ability to roll to previous ZFS snapshot of your entire OS is a gem stolen from Solaris which has no equal in the Linux world.

With Debian you will also get nasty scripts which will try to configure any package you just installed and start the daemon whether you will need it or not. apt-get is a nasty can of worms and I prefer Yum on Linux. There is nothing wrong with pkg install on FreeBSD or PC-BSD. I don't use appcafe. Debian does have more packages but I will contest that it has significantly more packages. Debian people are often shocked when I show them that a single RHEL RPM contains hundreds of Debian packages. FreeBSD ports are also coarser than Debian

FreeBSD has no KVM but it has Jails and please no PR lines about Dockers. That thing is a crap unless you have not seen Solaris Zones and FreeBSD containers. Bhyve might be contender to KVM soon. I actually prefer Xen Dom0 and Debian is the native platform. That is a big plus but that is not your typical desktop stuff.

Now Debian has MATLAB and bunch of other scientific computing software which FreeBSD doesn't have. Quality of Debian documentation is questionable.
Suspend/resume and all other stuff is no question big plus for Debian.


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## juiced (Jul 20, 2015)

Oko said:


> What file system Jessie uses for root partition? If it is Ext2 or even 4 it would be no go in my book. DragonFly BSD has excellent support for Haswell which could be ported for FreeBSD.
> 
> The biggest problem I personally see is the lack of developers who are actually using FreeBSD on their own desktops. That is why use see the project like DragonFly BSD which has two dozen developers having much more usable desktop than FreeBSD which has couple hundreds of developers.


My Debian Jessie rig has XFS on everything. /boot /root /home /var.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 20, 2015)

Oko said:


> The biggest problem I personally see is the lack of developers who are actually using FreeBSD on their own desktops. That is why use see the project like DragonFly BSD which has two dozen developers having much more usable desktop than FreeBSD which has couple hundreds of developers.



That's because they're using Macs.  It kind of nullifies the reason for FreeBSD on the desktop. It already exists. Hence the lack of caring.


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## protocelt (Jul 20, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> That's because they're using Macs.  *It kind of nullifies the reason for FreeBSD on the desktop. It already exists.* Hence the lack of caring.


https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths


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## Beastie7 (Jul 20, 2015)

protocelt said:


> https://wiki.freebsd.org/Myths



https://developer.apple.com/library.../apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000905-CH214-TPXREF101


No matter how you slice it, Mac OS X is pure and certified BSD UNIX. Darwin (its' base system) is an implementation of BSD UNIX. Apple just decided to leverage FreeBSD. That so called "myth" is an ignorant oversimplification.

Apple adding a proprietary API on-top of it (Cocoa) doesn't make any less BSD UNIX. So it does exist.


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## abishai (Jul 20, 2015)

Oko said:


> That is why use see the project like DragonFly BSD which has two dozen developers having much more usable desktop than FreeBSD which has couple hundreds of developers.


I thought about DragonFlyBSD for my desktop, but it lacks some features, like software RAID support  Maybe due to extremely small community. The problem of FreeBSD is outdated graphics stack, mainly because of Nvidia blob. On other BSDs it's unavailable and developers have to port AMD/Intel drivers with much more priority.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 20, 2015)

protocelt said:


> My apologies if my post came across as abrasive. No disrespect intended



I never understood it disrespective 

I should add, that I haven't got too much experience with Debian yet, but from what I know, it is far more mature than e.g. Fedora, but still not FreeBSD when it comes to being stable and reliable.

Easy installers don't make me jump on my bed and shout the OS' name for half an hour. No problem to spend an hour or two installing an application, as long as it stays that way! So "almost every update breaks your configuration" definitely outweighs "It has a neat installer" for me.



Oko said:


> Flash is dead on the Linux as well. Really if you need Linux specific stuff you would save lots of time using Linux instead of getting frustrated with FreeBSD emulation layer.



Flash is dead on Linux? Hm, that's like saying "Petrol is dead on Mercedes as well" to a BMW-buyer  As long as Flash is used so widely, there will always be some client, don't you agree?

Don't need too much Linux-stuff (I guess), but Windows-stuff will be a question. Company uses Macs and PCs, so I think chances are not bad, they will not use some exotic software.


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## protocelt (Jul 20, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> https://developer.apple.com/library.../apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000905-CH214-TPXREF101
> 
> 
> No matter how you slice it, Mac OS X is pure and certified BSD UNIX. Darwin (its' base system) is an implementation of BSD UNIX. Apple just decided to leverage FreeBSD. That so called "myth" is an ignorant oversimplification.
> ...


 I wouldn't debate OS X is not part of the BSD family of operating systems. It's a fine operating system though it's not for me as it's too locked down and the connected hardware, while certainly nice, is too expensive IMO. I would debate however that even though some code is shared, OS X is not FreeBSD and the fact that it's successful doesn't in any way negate the usefulness of FreeBSD or any BSD for that matter to improve on the desktop. Besides that dog-fooding your own platform, while not always feasible, will many times make for a better outcome.


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## hashime (Jul 20, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> but still not FreeBSD when it comes to being stable and reliable.


Really not true. Both are reliable and stable. Nowadays that's mostly a myth. I see Windows 2000 servers still being used, very reliable and very stable. Would not use it myself, but hard to argue against reliable and stable here.

In addition Debian releases are supported longer, more than twice as long.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 20, 2015)

Disagree. Linux is definitely not as stable as FreeBSD. I think, but am not too much into details, that Xorg is the weak spot. Applications run in a window manager can and do easily freeze or crash a linux system. This might depend on the application, of course. Fedora's beta stuff is more likely to behave like this than a stable Debian/Red Hat/SLES release. Still, the fact that it CAN crash/freeze the system is definitely a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig problem.

Agree on the other stuff though, I have used Windows servers/desktops/notebooks over years without a single crash. No idea what does Linux-fanboys did to their machines that crashed them every five minutes


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## NewGuy (Jul 20, 2015)

In the original post the Patrick mentioned differences between PC-BSD and FreeBSD and mentioned PC-BSD shipping with KDE. I'd like to point out that when you install PC-BSD you can seelct which (if any) desktop environment to use. It could be KDE, but you could just as easily select no desktop or Xfce or Lumina or any of the other supported desktop environments and window managers.

As for the differences, PC-BSD is basically FreeBSD with a graphical installer and nice GUI tools installed by default. It also ships with ZFS as the main file system and convenience tools to better use ZFS. For example, PC-BSD ships with beadm, a way to easily create file system snapshots so you can rescue your OS if an update or configuration change borks the system.

Otherwise PC-BSD and FreeBSD are the same system, one just has a layer of convenience (some might say bloat) on top of the FreeBSD base.

As for Debian vs FreeBSD... I find hardware support (especially for laptops) a lot better on Debian. I think FreeBSD is slightly lighter on resources. Both have similar support cycles, similar software in the package repositories. Debian is a little more mainstream and gets better support from upstream developers. I think how FreeBSD more clearly separates base OS from third-party software.

In the end, I recommend trying out each one in a virtual machine and seeing what suits you best. Personally, I like running Debian on my laptop and PC-BSD's server edition on my servers.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 20, 2015)

protocelt said:


> I wouldn't debate OS X is not part of the BSD family of operating systems. It's a fine operating system though it's not for me as it's too locked down and the connected hardware, while certainly nice, is too expensive IMO. I would debate however that even though some code is shared, OS X is not FreeBSD and the fact that it's successful doesn't in any way negate the usefulness of FreeBSD or any BSD for that matter to improve on the desktop. Besides that dog-fooding your own platform, while not always feasible, will many times make for a better outcome.



All I'm saying is that a solution to the problem (FreeBSD on the desktop) already exists, a good one at that. Its' more of a child of FreeBSD than it being FreeBSD. Why re-create it? Biases aside, it just isn't practical to do it. The primary focus was always servers - as it should be.

FreeBSD certainly could have potential on the desktop, but if the developers really cared about the desktop, we'd see way more attention towards desktop related stuff to support. Think about it, its' been 9 years since the PC-BSD project started, and its' no-where near a polished open source desktop like (dare, I say it..) Ubuntu. Having our own DE would've been realized a long time ago. Hell, we don't even have haswell support, and broadwell just came out. There's simply no incentive for the devs. The Desktop is an ugly/complicated place to work on also.

As for the value. Meh, I guess I'm old school. I prefer vertically integrated products and am fond of the value of them.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 20, 2015)

just in:

http://gitweb.dragonflybsd.org/dragonfly.git/commit/27a0f88200cb2ea36420394e1ca44078604fd352


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 20, 2015)

NewGuy said:


> In the end, I recommend trying out each one in a virtual machine and seeing what suits you best. Personally, I like running Debian on my laptop and PC-BSD's server edition on my servers.



I dislike virtual machines for the hardware support reason. A VM is ok if you want to try, whether you prefer KDE, Gnome or Windows 7. But to spot weaknesses on a system it's best to install it on a hd and run it. At this very moment, I am installing Debian on a desktop and FreeBSD on a spare notebook and see what I will end up with!


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## hashime (Jul 20, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> Disagree. Linux is definitely not as stable as FreeBSD. I think, but am not too much into details, that Xorg is the weak spot. Applications run in a window manager can and do easily freeze or crash a Linux system. This might depend on the application, of course



That's just wrong. No idea where you heard that, has not happened to me once in the last 10 years. FreeBSD runs the same Xorg and Gnome/KDE as all the Linux distributions btw.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 21, 2015)

There is something wrong in this discussion. I don't understand what's wrong with running a desktop on FreeBSD. The reason I say that is that currently I've got the best desktop I've ever had with any OS (since desktops were invented) and I'm running FreeBSD.


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## roddierod (Jul 21, 2015)

OJ said:


> There is something wrong in this discussion. I don't understand what's wrong with running a desktop on FreeBSD. The reason I say that is that currently I've got the best desktop I've ever had with any OS (since desktops were invented) and I'm running FreeBSD.



I think whenever the "desktop" discussion comes up, "desktop" needs to be defined. I agree with you. I've been using FreeBSD as a desktop going on 15 years now and whenever I try and use anything else I feel hampered or constrained and less productive...and I use Windows everyday at work because I am forced too.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 21, 2015)

OJ said:


> There is something wrong in this discussion. I don't understand what's wrong with running a desktop on FreeBSD. The reason I say that is that currently I've got the best desktop I've ever had with any OS (since desktops were invented) and I'm running FreeBSD.



There are two reasons, why FreeBSD is not suitable:

1. Important software cannot be run.
On a server, you hardly run across software not available. Apache, qmail, bind, NFS, samba, everything there. But on a desktop, I might have to run some Windows only software or a program that has been ported to Linux, but cannot be run under the FreeBSD compatibility layer. What will you tell your boss? "Sorry but I can't make that xyz-thing for you, my OS is not able to execute the program for it"​2. Your hardware is not supported

But this is not what I was talking about, as these questions can be easily answered. Actually, question wasn't "Can I run FreeBSD on a desktop at all?" but rather "If I set up a desktop with PC-BSD and run it, what will happen over the next x years?" One excellent answer was "Updates are horrible with PC-BSD and package-manager do not work together properly" That's a very good reason to stay away from PC-BSD. If I have the choice among spending three days to install a FreeBSD with a lot of compiling and searching and stuff, and spending two hours installing PC-BSD every two months, because an update breaks my whole configuration, I know what to pick 



hashime said:


> That's just wrong. No idea where you heard that, has not happened to me once in the last 10 years. FreeBSD runs the same Xorg and Gnome/KDE as all the Linux distributions btw.



On my own desktop  I know the software is identical, but the Linux kernel definitely handles them differently.


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## roddierod (Jul 21, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> There are two reasons, why FreeBSD is not suitable:
> 
> 1. Important software cannot be run.
> On a server, you hardly run across software not available. Apache, qmail, bind, NFS, samba, everything there. But on a desktop, I might have to run some Windows only software or a program that has been ported to Linux, but cannot be run under the FreeBSD compatibility layer. What will you tell your boss? "Sorry but I can't make that xyz-thing for you, my OS is not able to execute the program for it"​2. Your hardware is not supported



So then, OS X is not suitable for the desktop as it will not run Windows only software that has been ported to Linux and has no native OS X version and OS X wont run on my HP or Dell laptop?

And how are you running a different OS at your place of employment than everyone else?


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## ANOKNUSA (Jul 21, 2015)

OJ said:


> There is something wrong in this discussion. I don't understand what's wrong with running a desktop on FreeBSD.



What's "wrong" here is that when people refer to a particular platform as a "good desktop operating system," what they mean is that it's an operating system that a lobotomized baboon on PCP could operate with its tongue while bound and blindfolded. These constant niggling debates over whether this OS or that is a "good desktop OS" drive me insane. What people mean by "good desktop OS," in the end, is "Can any moron used to Windows learn how to use it in two minutes?" The answer will always be "No," and so the answer to whether Linux and *BSD are good desktop OSes will always be "No."

The barrier is not and has never been the operating system, but the people using it. People are creatures of habit who will fight to maintain their bad habits, deny their own ignorance and blame others for their failures until fate or death compel them to change or stop.  In the minds of the vast majority of people--the people who don't understand the distinction between a computer and an operating system, and are used to doing things one way and will never, never, never change their habits--*nix will always and forever be a "bad desktop OS." For everyone else--the people willing to learn and try new things, who are aware of their own ignorance and willing to do something about it--*nix is whatever the hell you want to make it. The debate over what is or is not a "good desktop OS" is insoluble and idiotic. Let it die, already.

[Typed from my FreeBSD laptop running GNOME 3.]


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 21, 2015)

ANOKNUSA Couldn't have said it better myself.

Also a FreeBSD desktop user for 11 years, currently using a workstation built on (then) bleeding edge hardware just one year ago for creating bleeding edge web sites using all the modern tools of today.


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## freethread (Jul 21, 2015)

What ANOKNUSA said is suitable for the most of the users of any kind of desktop running on any kind of OS. That's what I more or less think about smartphones, no matter what the OS it runs. The matter is the kind of users, the most of them use a computer to play games or shopping, in the same way they use smartphones, the difference is that a smartphone is a bit smaller and in most of cases you can keep it in a poket, then you can also call someone.

I have another concept of 'computer', most for computing, programming, serving, so I have no trouble installing a desktop environment (or a window manager) on FreeBSD and be happy with it, sometimes I need an application (port) to do unusual job like an image editor or a GUI file archiver to manage zip files and alike, I take a while to choose the one that satisfy me (my background is Windows and my brain has it's habits).

I usually use Windows, but have some FreeBSD machines with Xfce and KDE and use them to compile, I will never watch a film on them, nor listen music, nor navigate youtube or alike, so, to me, using FreeBSD as a desktop is as good as using Windows, many times it's better (no annoying messages or warnings or unwanted backround jobs and services). But I use computer for compiling or at least scripting, most of the time using an IDE that I'm used, and FreeBSD have them on ports.

From the marketing point of view... marketing need monkeys (or dogs on acid, or PCP), so what you expect from a generic desktop machine? The quality is inversely proportional to quantity (most of times), FreeBSD fall under this rule.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 21, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> There are two reasons, why FreeBSD is not suitable:
> 
> 1. Important software cannot be run.



All my important software runs just fine. I'm sorry to hear that yours doesn't.


> 2. Your hardware is not supported


My hardware is well supported. Perhaps because I bought it myself (and I know what I'm doing there), or perhaps because FreeBSD runs on most hardware just fine.


> "Updates are horrible with PC-BSD and package-manager do not work together properly"


My experience is not like that with FreeBSD.


> If I have the choice among spending three days to install a FreeBSD with a lot of compiling and searching and stuff, and spending two hours installing PC-BSD every two months, because an update breaks my whole configuration, I know what to pick


I admit that I have encountered some problems from time to time, but I've gotten good help on this forum. In the last few years the problems have not been with the OS, but rather my lack of skill with it.

The bottom line is that I apparently live in a different universe from some people - but I like it here.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 21, 2015)

I guess I'm into this thread now, so I'll just comment on my experience with all three operating system desktops (as per the thread topic).

I did try PC-BSD for about a year. Perhaps it wasn't as mature then, but I found that all it did was add someone else's personal choices for me to try to get around. I had hoped that it was, as promised then, FreeBSD with KDE. That was not the case and I ended up using Xfce with it. In the end I decided that FreeBSD was much easier to deal with.

Debian is fine. I've moved away from Linux because of its fundamental instability. I use that word in the English sense. That is, it is unstable. Things change all the time. That means that when it comes to reinstalling or other configurations, a few years later I can't use my notes. I understand that this "problem" comes from the way that it is developed - lots of younger folk who like new things. That's fine, and I value highly the egalitarian process of open source. I'm not that fond of the result though.

I have two secondary machines which run Debian with a desktop. I find that what they give you out of the box requires a lot more clicking and keystrokes to operate. IOW, it's troublesome for me. I don't even know what those desktops are called, and I don't care. For my main machine I will always prefer to install the basic OS and then add the desktop environment of my choice. (KDE or Fluxbox.) Bundling them together doesn't make any sense to me. I don't want to inherit someone else's configuration.

The idea of inheriting someone else's personal setup turns me right off. If for some reason I could find a way to stomach proprietary software, I still could never use MS-Windows or Apple simply because I cant set those up the way I want. They are fundamentally useless to me. I may be kinky in demanding personal ownership of my computer, but because I am that way, I chose FreeBSD.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 21, 2015)

I have found something very "funny" today: With my Debian, the CPU can be set to two different frequencies. TWO! With FreeBSD I can set the CPU to whatever value I like, even down to 200. Out of the box of course


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## teo (Jul 21, 2015)

Why they insist with Debian? When Debian is systemd, and it betrayed its own principles and philosophy of Linux,  this is a FreeBSD forum.  PC-BSD does not have 32-bit architecture, consumes much resources from on 64-bit machine.


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## Oko (Jul 21, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> There are two reasons, why FreeBSD is not suitable:
> 
> 1. Important software cannot be run.
> On a server, you hardly run across software not available. Apache, qmail, bind, NFS, samba, everything there. But on a desktop, I might have to run some Windows only software or a program that has been ported to Linux, but cannot be run under the FreeBSD compatibility layer. What will you tell your boss? "Sorry but I can't make that xyz-thing for you, my OS is not able to execute the program for it"
> ...



It is kind a funny you mentioned that as that is exactly the reason Windows is not usable to me. Imagine you need to edit 350 pages book, create some index, do words replacement or similar. On my OpenBSD machine I fire up nvi, sed, and needs be Perl and 15 minutes later TeX source is ready and book is ready for printing. On Windows unless you know how to use Cygwin you will be clicking that 350 pages word document 3 months and it is still going go look like a crap. I guess moral of the story is that very few Windows users write books. I hope that at least they read them


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## Beastie7 (Jul 22, 2015)

ANOKNUSA said:


> What's "wrong" here is that when people refer to a particular platform as a "good desktop operating system," what they mean is that it's an operating system that a lobotomized baboon on PCP could operate with its tongue while bound and blindfolded. These constant niggling debates over whether this OS or that is a "good desktop OS" drive me insane. What people mean by "good desktop OS," in the end, is "Can any moron used to Windows learn how to use it in two minutes?" The answer will always be "No," and so the answer to whether Linux and *BSD are good desktop OSes will always be "No."
> 
> The barrier is not and has never been the operating system, but the people using it. People are creatures of habit who will fight to maintain their bad habits, deny their own ignorance and blame others for their failures until fate or death compel them to change or stop.  In the minds of the vast majority of people--the people who don't understand the distinction between a computer and an operating system, and are used to doing things one way and will never, never, never change their habits--*nix will always and forever be a "bad desktop OS." For everyone else--the people willing to learn and try new things, who are aware of their own ignorance and willing to do something about it--*nix is whatever the hell you want to make it. The debate over what is or is not a "good desktop OS" is insoluble and idiotic. Let it die, already.
> 
> [Typed from my FreeBSD laptop running GNOME 3.]



I think this is oversimplifying things a bit. This is the exact same reasoning Windows 8 apologists used, yet the majority of the market (users) rejected it. Barrier to entry and subsequent usability to hugely relative to UI design principles and user experience an OS presents with a desktop environment; not just the end user being able to simply adapt to it. Now, I'm not going to go over the details because it's a long drag of a topic but there's psychology behind it. If the barrier has and always been been the user, the whole Windows 8 debacle would've never happened. Also, that's only one facet of what a good end user centric desktop entails; there is a distinction, and it goes beyond the desktop environment.

Now I agree it's pointless to argue in this demographic (we're geeks after-all in a server forum ), but when you're catering to a huge market of average Joes who just wants to get shit done, it matters. To "Let it die" is simply ignoring the user.


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## sysconfig (Jul 22, 2015)

I think which system is best for _your_ desktop largely depends on how _you_ use your desktop. If somebody has to run loads of Windows applications, it may be pointless to install anything but Windows. If it's just a few apps, VirtualBox exists and runs any Windows stuff beautifully.
Same for Linux. Not sure which applications might be running exclusively on Linux, but if you have them, use Linux (or again, VirtualBox if only occasional). 
If heavy dependencies on particular OS's don't exist, FreeBSD is a rather very good choice for a desktop. Sure, some hardware limitations may exist, but for the majority of relatively recent hardware, you should be fine.

What you can hold against FreeBSD (in comparison to Debian/Ubuntu) is that making your desktop work initially takes a _lot_ more effort and tuning. But once that's done, you don't need to worry about it any more. It just runs -- rather beautifully and extremely stable. Also, you've learned a lot along the way about what's actually going on, which Linux increasingly successfully hides from you. (It's becoming more and more of a Windows-y experience, IHHO)

There's a lot of features like ZFS, jails, OSS (as opposed to the rubbish broken PulseAudio), ports, relatively sane upgrade paths (and if you break something, use zfs rollback and try again), and many more, which I personally think are stronger than what Linux can offer, and they justify that additional effort.  

Also, you can customise FreeBSD a lot easier than any Linux (Gentoo possibly being an exception). Of course you can compile stuff manually with Debian (or any other Linux), but chances are you won't, because it requires a lot more work to keep up to date without breaking things afterwards, as all of them assume that you are using the provided binary packages. FreeBSD ports handle that a _lot_ better.

Typing this on FreeBSD 10-STABLE (XFCE desktop). I have had exactly zero system or window manager crashes on this desktop, no f***-ups with audio or anything awkward going on. It was worth the effort for me personally.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 23, 2015)

ANOKNUSA said:


> What's "wrong" here is that when people refer to a particular platform as a "good desktop operating system," what they mean is that it's an operating system that a lobotomized baboon on PCP could operate with its tongue while bound and blindfolded. These constant niggling debates over whether this OS or that is a "good desktop OS" drive me insane. What people mean by "good desktop OS," in the end, is "Can any moron used to Windows learn how to use it in two minutes?" The answer will always be "No," and so the answer to whether Linux and *BSD are good desktop OSes will always be "No."
> 
> The barrier is not and has never been the operating system, but the people using it. People are creatures of habit who will fight to maintain their bad habits, deny their own ignorance and blame others for their failures until fate or death compel them to change or stop.  In the minds of the vast majority of people--the people who don't understand the distinction between a computer and an operating system, and are used to doing things one way and will never, never, never change their habits--*nix will always and forever be a "bad desktop OS." For everyone else--the people willing to learn and try new things, who are aware of their own ignorance and willing to do something about it--*nix is whatever the hell you want to make it. The debate over what is or is not a "good desktop OS" is insoluble and idiotic. Let it die, already.
> 
> [Typed from my FreeBSD laptop running GNOME 3.]



Quotes like this are the exact reason why people are p... off by <insert random OS here>. It is pure overestimation to declare people as stupid, who do not share the same philosophy, only because one thinks, that their sole reason is being less smart. Different people have different lifes. I think I have explained my questions and also made clear, that I do have a bit more experience than the mentioned baboon. I have used UNIX since 1991, how much experience have you got? And no, I do not feel offended by you. But I absolutely dislike an attitude like "You are stupid because you don't know so much about computers as the divine yours truly"

So to my topic: sysconfig hit the bull's eye. Nothing else to say. My pattern is also "Use FreeBSD, FreeBSD is cool. If FreeBSD cannot offer what I need, use Debian. If Debian cannot offer what I need, use Windows" PCBSD is out of the race because I hate reconfiguring after every update


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## fernandel (Jul 25, 2015)

Oko said:


> It is kind a funny you mentioned that as that is exactly the reason Windows is not usable to me. Imagine you need to edit 350 pages book, create some index, do words replacement or similar. On my OpenBSD machine I fire up nvi, sed, and needs be Perl and 15 minutes later TeX source is ready and book is ready for printing. On Windows unless you know how to use Cygwin you will be clicking that 350 pages word document 3 months and it is still going go look like a crap. I guess moral of the story is that very few Windows users write books. I hope that at least they read them



OKO, please...
Do you think that for example *Günter Grass *is using OpenBSD for writing his books??


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## beanpole (Jul 27, 2015)

I just came across this thread: so I wanted to chime in about PC-BSD a bit (since I am a dev) and some of the differences from pure FreeBSD.
1) PC-BSD *is* 64-bit only, since it is standardized with ZFS-on-root.
2) PC-BSD uses GRUB as the boot loader so that we get out-of-box boot environment support (allowing a fail-safe rollback of the OS if anything should go wrong), as well as better support for dual/multi-boot situations.
3) PC-BSD performs background updates in a pristine boot environment - allowing you to continue using the system even while updates are being performed. Once it is complete, you simply get a notification about needing to reboot your system to complete the update procedure (whenever you are ready), and on reboot, it will go directly into the new (updated) boot environment. This ensures that if you ever had any issues with the update all you need to do is reboot and select your previous BE and continue on without loss of productivity. Our success rate with this new model of updates is so high (because of the clean BE starting point) that we have made the update procedures automatic by default (you can disable it or change automatic settings as desired). The only real "issues" that we still occasionally experience with updates are the same thing you get with running pkg manually - dropped packets causing a pkg to fail downloading properly. In this type of situation the back-end updater has a couple fallback methods to re-try the download, or just stop it for the time being and try it again at a later time (picking up where it left off with regards to downloads). The other information in this thread about update procedures on PC-BSD was woefully out of date, so I wanted to make sure you had the correct info... 
4) PC-BSD uses pkg for package management just like FreeBSD, the "PBI" system transitioned a couple years back to a simple information overlay for pkg (providing info necessary for a graphical AppCafe, such as screenshot links, related pkgs/plugins, pkg categorization by type, etc...). 

Remember that PC-BSD *is* just a pre-configured FreeBSD with some other nice utilities to make it easier to use - particularly for desktop systems (it is not a fork of FreeBSD). There is no reason to use our update mechanisms or utilities if you want to stick to the old freebsd-update/pkg update routines - you can manage it the exact same way as traditional FreeBSD.


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## teo (Jul 28, 2015)

Here very much one discusses FreeBSD vs PC-BSD vs Debian on desktop,  nobody speaks about GhostBSD that also is a FreeBSD, and it seems to me that excellent system on desktop, friendly to the end user.


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## scottro (Jul 28, 2015)

Yeah, I had forgotten that too.  It is quicker and easier to install than PCBSD, and probably a better choice for less powerful systems. I haven't used it in months, but when I did, I was quite impressed with its being easy to use for a beginner.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 28, 2015)

I don't understand the point of all these forks. Why not just gather a team of maintainers for each DE, like with GNOME 3/KDE. GhostBSD could easily just be the FreeBSD MATE team with their own FreeBSD oriented tweaks.

Ubuntu is a good example of this.


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## Oko (Jul 28, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I don't understand the point of all these forks. Why not just gather a team of maintainers for each DE, like with GNOME 3/KDE. GhostBSD could easily just be the FreeBSD MATE team with their own FreeBSD oriented tweaks.
> 
> Ubuntu is a good example of this.



You are missing the point. PC-BSD is not just KDE on the top of FreeBSD. PC-BSD is highly ZFS optimized and customized FreeBSD with better installer than vanilla FreeBSD which happens to come with several pre-configured desktop environments (KDE traditionally was receiving most love). I like it because TrueOS comes with bunch of pre-installed/pre-configured stuff ready to be used.

I am not using GhostBSD but to me it looks like highly optimized FreeBSD for older hardware (read UFS) which happens to come with pre-configured Gnome. Now if printer, scanner and bunch of other drivers are not installed and configured you will have little use of Gnome. So the point of these projects is that they are hiding this things from you.

Saying that Ubuntu is just Debian with pre-installed Gnome is just not true. Ubuntu is far more than just a vanilla Debian with Gnome on the top of it.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 29, 2015)

I was using Ubuntu as an example of having DE variants that coincide with its' core platform (Ubuntu). Customization is irrelevant, unless PC-BSD or Ubuntu is using its' own infrastructure (meaning different base, ports, src, etc), is it the same thing. PC-BSD should be called FreeBSD/Lumina because practically, there's no difference. Hence why it's pointless, and it creates communal fragmentation.


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## Crivens (Jul 29, 2015)

fernandel said:


> OKO, please...
> Do you think that for example *Günter Grass *is using OpenBSD for writing his books??


No, he does not. Nor is he using Word. He is also very unlikely to change his habits, you see?


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## protocelt (Jul 29, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I was using Ubuntu as an example of having DE variants that coincide with its' core platform (Ubuntu). Customization is irrelevant, unless PC-BSD or Ubuntu is using its' own infrastructure (meaning different base, ports, src, etc), is it the same thing. PC-BSD should be called FreeBSD/Lumina because practically, there's no difference. *Hence why it's pointless, and it creates communal fragmentation*.


 How does it create fragmentation if it is actually just FreeBSD pre-configured? Fragmentation assumes forking of the original which isn't the case here. Neither GhostBSD nor PC-BSD are forked from FreeBSD. All of PC-BSD's utilities are available in the ports tree as well. If anything these projects are encouraging growth for FreeBSD IMO.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 29, 2015)

protocelt said:


> How does it create fragmentation if it is actually just FreeBSD pre-configured? Fragmentation assumes forking of the original which isn't the case here. Neither GhostBSD nor PC-BSD are forked from FreeBSD. All of PC-BSD's utilities are available in the ports tree as well. If anything these projects are encouraging growth for FreeBSD IMO.



In terms of code, no. But it makes more sense to just update the FreeBSD GNOME project page (which needs to be updated, btw) with a brief overview and pre-configured images, then direct help to the FreeBSD subforums/handbook instead of creating an entirely new site/forums/docs/whatever splitting the community, for example. It puts FreeBSD at the forefront. The Ubuntu GNOME team does something like this.

I'd be more practical combing all the qt5/sh utilities with Lumina and just call it the Lumina Project. IMO With all these external wrappers (which break often) around existing FreeBSD utilities and different repos, it certainly creates a sense of fragmentation.

That's all I'm saying.


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## protocelt (Jul 29, 2015)

I agree the FreeBSD Gnome project page definitely needs updating. I don't use GNOME but am still quite tempted to ask how I can help with that directly as there are lots of users who do use it. IIRC, while PC-BSD is free for anyone to use as they wish, iXsystems supports the development of the project and offers paid support as well for those who want/need it so having a separate name for that project makes perfect sense really. FreeBSD as a platform doesn't work quite the same as the way Linux does.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 29, 2015)

You're right. I'm just trying to make sense of all this. I'd be nice for FreeBSD to have it's own GNOME-like project though.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 29, 2015)

Speaking about different projects, a philosophical question:

How come, yesterday an amor-image popped up on my screen, although I never used anything like xterm and firefox?


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 29, 2015)

By the way, my two cents about the discussion (I started):

I set up my test box using FreeBSD 10, nvidia-drivers from ports, KDE, Gnome, XFCE, LXDE and i3 desktops with binary sources.

I like:
- Automatic Wifi-installation at install-time. I remember horrible times either manually setting it up or using a wifi-cable until I found the right solution.
- Not a single crash of buggy beta-software

I dislike:
- Missing bsdfan documentation
- Took me two hours until I realised why i3 wasn't working. I created a config file without knowing that thereby it does not read /usr/local/etc-files anymore and hence nothing was working properly.

My new computer arrived yesterday and I hope it will run bsdfan as well, because this is one of the musts...


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## Crivens (Jul 29, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> I like:
> - Automatic Wifi-installation at install-time. I remember horrible times either manually setting it up or using a *wifi-cable* until I found the right solution.


 Yes, they tend to fetch rather good money on eBay, so if you do not need it any more...


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 29, 2015)

No prob. I'll sell for 25 quid each. Unfortunately, no colour left expect transparent


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## teo (Jul 29, 2015)

But,  gnome who cares? It seems to me a desk too heavy, to been a failure the implementation of gnome 3.14.

Since a few weeks ago, I am proving GhostBSD  for desktop in virtualbox, a cute and lightweight system that flies, and remains stable the system GhostBSD 10.1 beta2 MATE, actually left me surprised, nothing comparable with the PCBSD is very heavy.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 29, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> I dislike:
> - Missing bsdfan documentation
> - Took me two hours until I realised why i3 wasn't working. I created a config file without knowing that thereby it does not read /usr/local/etc-files anymore and hence nothing was working properly.


Well, that's an i3 or their documentation issue, not a FreeBSD issue.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 30, 2015)

teo said:


> But,  gnome who cares? It seems to me a desk too heavy, to been a failure the implementation of gnome 3.14.
> 
> Since a few weeks ago, I am proving GhostBSD  for desktop in virtualbox, a cute and lightweight system that flies, and remains stable the system GhostBSD 10.1 beta2 MATE, actually left me surprised, nothing comparable with the PCBSD is very heavy.



I'm a fan of MATE. It's the only sane desktop from the Linux crowd IMO; simple and lightweight at that too. I like Solaris' implementation of GNOME 2 also. I'd rather FreeBSD follow MATE or Cinnamon. It's only a matter of time before systemd swallows GNOME 3.


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## ANOKNUSA (Jul 31, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Well, that's an i3 or their documentation issue, not a FreeBSD issue.





			
				i3 man page said:
			
		

> *FILES*
> ~/.i3/config (or ~/.config/i3/config)
> When starting, i3 looks for configuration files in the following order:
> 
> ...



i3 is quite possibly the best-documented window manager out there.


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## Patrick Bär (Jul 31, 2015)

Maybe yes, but the FreeBSD binary package i3 starts up with an empty i3 file, asking "I could not find a config-file, shall I create one?" and in there are two lines: $mod+Enter and $mod+d. Nothing else. All the default keybindings are kept in /usr/local/etc/i3/config. So how does a first time user find out, the newly created file is actually useless and he has to copy the files from /usr/local/etc/i3/config?


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 31, 2015)

Many programs come with a default config that must be copied over. It's a core of FreeBSD in etc/defaults and I'm betting there is the same in other Unixes and Linux. Without looking, I'm betting i3 talks about this in their docs. mail/sendmail does it. x11/xorg does it.


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## Monti (Jul 31, 2015)

ANOKNUSA said:


> ... What people mean by "good desktop OS," in the end, is "Can any moron used to Windows learn how to use it in two minutes?" The answer will always be "No," and so the answer to whether Linux and *BSD are good desktop OSes will always be "No."
> 
> .... --*nix will always and forever be a "bad desktop OS." For everyone else--the people willing to learn and try new things, who are aware of their own ignorance and willing to do something about it--*nix is whatever the hell you want to make it. The debate over what is or is not a "good desktop OS" is insoluble and idiotic. Let it die, already......



 Love it! It's always refreshing when someone goes to the heart of the matter and calls it for what it is. No offense anyone, goes for me too. Thanks for setting things straight ANOKNUSA, goes for everything you wrote. Keeps the mind healthy.  Kind of reminds me of the feeling one gets after being deluded by reading Political Law and then being healed again after being reminded of Natural Law.


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## ANOKNUSA (Aug 1, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> So how does a first time user find out, the newly created file is actually useless and he has to copy the files from /usr/local/etc/i3/config?



If the newly created file was actually empty, that might be a bug worth reporting upstream.

As for how a new user is supposed to know something, the answer is that they're not. Not without first learning, and the only way to do that is to read the documentation and play around.

EDIT: I just moved my own i3 config file to ~/.config/i3/config_bak, restarted, and went through the configuration wizard. It generated a perfectly good default config file at ~/.i3/config.


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## Patrick Bär (Aug 1, 2015)

I had to discard the idea of using FreeBSD and installed Debian on that machine, it created a perfect config file, just like you said. But on FreeBSD, it creates a config with nothing but mod+d and mod+enter


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## hashime (Aug 2, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> I had to discard the idea of using FreeBSD and installed Debian on that machine, it created a perfect config file, just like you said. But on FreeBSD, it creates a config with nothing but mod+d and mod+enter



Told you in the beginning


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## RichardET (Aug 5, 2015)

sysconfig said:


> I think which system is best for _your_ desktop largely depends on how _you_ use your desktop. If somebody has to run loads of Windows applications, it may be pointless to install anything but Windows. If it's just a few apps, VirtualBox exists and runs any Windows stuff beautifully.
> Same for Linux. Not sure which applications might be running exclusively on Linux, but if you have them, use Linux (or again, VirtualBox if only occasional).
> If heavy dependencies on particular OS's don't exist, FreeBSD is a rather very good choice for a desktop. Sure, some hardware limitations may exist, but for the majority of relatively recent hardware, you should be fine.
> 
> ...



I use Ubuntu on a four year old Lenovo laptop, mainly because I use VMware with it.  It's all set up, not really interested in trying to convert the VMs to VirtualBox right now.  But on my nine year old desktop, I am running FreeBSD 10.1.  It is a great system and more stable than Ubuntu is on the laptop.
I am also very disappointed that Debian went with systemd.  Is it now just a tool of Red hat?


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## sysconfig (Aug 6, 2015)

RichardET said:


> I am also very disappointed that Debian went with systemd.  Is it now just a tool of Red hat?



I think it was conceived by Lennart Poettering, who is also behind Avahi and PulseAudio (the latter another heap of [self-censored]). He happens to be employed by Red Hat, so no surprise that they are pushing it with RHEL 7 (and for a long time already with Fedora).

I'm not sure why the majority of Linux distros (or at least all major ones) adopt systemd, oddly including the distros that focus on servers. But that goes off topic, and I'm not sure I even want to know


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## TiberiusDuval (Aug 8, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> One excellent answer was "Updates are horrible with PC-BSD and package-manager do not work together properly" That's a very good reason to stay away from PC-BSD. If I have the choice among spending three days to install a FreeBSD with a lot of compiling and searching and stuff, and spending two hours installing PC-BSD every two months, because an update breaks my whole configuration, I know what to pick


Since PC-BSD changed its update model to use ZFS snapshot features and boot-environments I haven't ever got to situation where I need to reinstall system. Before that, yes update system was horrific and had good chance of messing up your system. Nowadays it is mostly small annoying problems, like making it to keep older Nvidia drivers instead of newer blob, as it does not support my old GTX260. Even if new update messes up system, I only need to choose previous version from grub menu, to get to pre-update working system. 

I have been mostly satisfied with PC-BSD. It mostly does what it promises, gives pre-configured FreeBSD desktop to users, with various usefull tools.


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## Patrick Bär (Aug 11, 2015)

Hm, sad to bring this one up again. 

I just plugged a two year old external hard disk in a FreeBSD 10 box, and another error, couldn't identify it. Google brought up a lot of those incidents, but no solution. 

Sorry Berkeley, but 10 years ago the USB stack of FreeBSD was a mess, 10 years! USB is de facto Standard in connecting peripherical devices and it's still bringing up errors? Technical knock-out for FreeBSD...


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## kpa (Aug 11, 2015)

The solution is in usb_quirk(4) but the problem cases won't be identified and added to the kernel permanently until someone comes across them and REPORTS them in PR:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi

This just underlines the effect of having a very small userbase compared to Linux. Linux has gone trough the same iterative process of encountering new hardware that doesn't work for whatever arcane reason and finally someone with enough knowledge has figured out how to fix the problem and the fix is included in the Linux kernel. With a much much larger userbase the problem cases get reported much more often and there's a higher chance that the problems get fixed quicker.

I have used Linux long enough to really know what it was like some ten to fifteen years ago, the support for many common pieces of hardware (not to mention the more exotic ones) was underwhelming to put it mildly. It's really only recently that Linux has picked up the pace with its hardware support.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 11, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> Hm, sad to bring this one up again.
> 
> I just plugged a two year old external hard disk in a FreeBSD 10 box, and another error, couldn't identify it. Google brought up a lot of those incidents, but no solution.
> 
> Sorry Berkeley, but 10 years ago the USB stack of FreeBSD was a mess, 10 years! USB is de facto Standard in connecting peripherical devices and it's still bringing up errors? Technical knock-out for FreeBSD...



Submit a PR please...


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## kpa (Aug 11, 2015)

For what it's worth, I chose Debian (8.1) for my laptop when I threw out the Windows 7 installation that was on it. It just works and does the job it's supposed to do. I saw no point in trying to tinker with PC-BSD or FreeBSD to get everything working, my time is too limited for that.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 11, 2015)

kpa said:


> For what it's worth, I chose Debian (8.1) for my laptop when I threw out the Windows 7 installation that was on it. It just works and does the job it's supposed to do. I saw no point in trying to tinker with PC-BSD or FreeBSD to get everything working, my time is too limited for that.



+1 One of many reasons why I stick with OS X.


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## shepper (Aug 11, 2015)

I'll throw out my two cents as a OpenBSD/FreeBSD/Debian desktop user.  I essentially have the same custom desktop running on all three systems - the only thing that visually distinguishes them is the logo I pasted into the GIMP derived wallpaper.  I even run lpr(1) printing in Debian.

From my standpoint, customization is relevant.  No one produces the exact system I use out of the box. 
Starting with bare installs, I add the same software in all three systems and utilize the same configuration files between all three systems (printcap/ghostscript filter, .muttrc, .Xdefaults/.Xresources, OpenBox menu.xml)

I think the OP could help guide the discussion by listing the specialized tasks that he/she needs to accomplish.  For example:  accessing an Office2010 exchange server, desktop publishing, CAD drafting/3D printing, dropbox/backup solutions . . . . . .


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## Deleted member 9563 (Aug 12, 2015)

There's always going to be problems. I've been an open source advocate since I found out what it was and I can't help but notice how the Mac people that I deal with are having trouble interacting with the world when it comes to e-mail, file formats, general compatibility, and just getting things to work. I'm not at all putting down Macs, but just wish to say that what is probably the most polished and stable offering out there is still not a complete solution for everybody.

As for Debian, I've used it for years. However, having just gotten a new monitor, I'd like to say that FreeBSD (thankfully my main machine) was able to deal with it without a glitch. That's how it should be with monitors, but another machine with the latest Debian on a 10 year old Intel board took me a day's worth of frustration to get to work. I had to use Xrandr to force it. Linux isn't always ahead on hardware.


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## Oko (Aug 12, 2015)

kpa said:


> For what it's worth, I chose Debian (8.1) for my laptop when I threw out the windows 7 installation that was on it. It just works and does the job it's supposed to do. I saw no point in trying to tinker with PC-BSD or FreeBSD to get everything working, my time is too limited for that.


This is a disingenuous statement. If you said you bought a laptop pre-installed with Ubuntu which is based of Debian and "everything" worked out of box I would believe you. Installing vanilla Debian on a random laptop is no different than installing any BSDs. IIRC vanilla Debian doesn't include much proprietary crude beyond vanilla Linux kernel so quite a bit of tinkering is needed to get things working (at least first time around).

I am not arguing with a taste and Debian is a fine OS but many things are just completely non-UNIX. That might be a good thing but people like me who love UNIX find it irritating.


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## abishai (Aug 12, 2015)

sysconfig said:


> PulseAudio (the latter another heap of [self-censored]).


What's wrong with pulseaudio? I use it on all my FreeBSD desktops without any issue and with very small memory footprint (~4MB). It just works and have easy interface to assign sound devices to applications.


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## Patrick Bär (Aug 12, 2015)

kpa said:


> For what it's worth, I chose Debian (8.1) for my laptop when I threw out the windows 7 installation that was on it. It just works and does the job it's supposed to do. I saw no point in trying to tinker with PC-BSD or FreeBSD to get everything working, my time is too limited for that.



True words. But I have to add, that FreeBSD was not more problem than Debian. Saying this, I did a minimum install without any gnome or KDE or XFCE, which would prove assistants for everything. I think, PC-BSD with preconfigured KDE works just like Debian. 



shepper said:


> I think the OP could help guide the discussion by listing the specialized tasks that he/she needs to accomplish.



Nothing like that, actually. My "special task" was to run without problems. The reason for turning my back to FreeBSD was this very latest problem with USB. What shall I say? For work I installed debian and it worked well for me. (Intel chipsets made me do it) At home I tried latest FreeBSD, but not working USB is deadly. My data-harddrive did not work with my notebook, so what should I do? File a request and wait until somebody solves the issue, before I get to my data? I do understand, development of some notebook driver is not number one on the list, but USB? 



OJ said:


> There's always going to be problems. I've been an open source advocate since I found out what it was and I can't help but notice how the Mac people that I deal with are having trouble interacting with the world when it comes to e-mail, file formats, general compatibility, and just getting things to work. I'm not at all putting down Macs, but just wish to say that what is probably the most polished and stable offering out there is still not a complete solution for everybody.



Every user will say, her OS is the only stable and easy-to-use one. The others plain suck. Always.


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## hwagemann (Aug 12, 2015)

Hello Patrick Bär,

I'm new here and wants to give FreeBSD a try tomorrow, so I cannot say much to FreeBSD. Also with PC-BSD I've only little experience, but to this statement 





> I think, PC-BSD with preconfigured KDE works just like Debian.


 I can say something: On Fujitsu Notebook of my wife with an Intel Quadcore, 4 GB Ram and Intelgrafic (not Haswell) a Debian 8.1 with KDE4 (I'm familar with Debian GNU/Linux since 2003) sprints and a PC-BSD creeps, using it is a pain. And I think this has not to do with the quality of PC-BSD but with the decision of developers to cancel support for UFS2 and chosing ZFS as standard filesystem. If you've a workstation, more than 8 GB DDR3 1600 Ram, a fast CPU and a NVIDIA Card then I guess you'll have a great preconfigured KDE system based on FreeBSD.

Kind regards,
  Holger


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## ANOKNUSA (Aug 12, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> I do understand, development of some notebook driver is not number one on the list, but USB?



I'm tired of this ignorant rambling. As you've been politely reminded twice already, _things don't get fixed if you don't tell the right people they're broken._ It's not that the developers don't focus on USB, it's that they don't know there's a problem. And seeing as how (as you already pointed out) USB is an industry standard, and not just used on notebooks, I'd say the devs have a rather good incentive for looking into that. You just don't know what you're doing, and don't want to bother learning or contributing. So don't. Give it up and leave, already.



Patrick Bär said:


> Every user will say, her OS is the only stable and easy-to-use one. The others plain suck. Always.



Well, _you_ certainly would say that. I'd say that every operating system has a learning curve, that no one can know its capabilities without investing time and energy into learning and applying those capabilities, and that one's experience with it is predicated on one's willingness to shirk one's own ignorance in opposition to one's preformed expectations.


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## jrm@ (Aug 12, 2015)

kpa said:


> For what it's worth, I chose Debian (8.1) for my laptop when I threw out the windows 7 installation that was on it. It just works and does the job it's supposed to do. I saw no point in trying to tinker with PC-BSD or FreeBSD to get everything working, my time is too limited for that.



To each his own, but spending time tinkering and finding the corner cases and submitting bug reports and patches, so that things just work for everyone else can be a nice way for users to contribute back.  I have spent time tinkering and, for me, it's paid off.  I feel like I _own_ my FreeBSD desktop.


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## Patrick Bär (Aug 12, 2015)

ANOKNUSA said:


> I'm tired of this ignorant rambling.



As tired as I am of your persisting "You don't share my opinion, so you are stupid and not worth being listened to"-attitude. I do not think there is an advantage in answering you, I am sorry. 



jrm said:


> To each his own, but spending time tinkering and finding the corner cases and submitting bug reports and patches, so that things just work for everyone else can be a nice way for users to contribute back.  I have spent time tinkering and, for me, it's payed off.  I feel like I _own_ my FreeBSD desktop.



Well, of course this is an attitude I respect. But considering this, what kind of advice can you give me for my situation: I have a single private computer at home and it runs FreeBSD 10. In the evening, I would like to see some nice pictures of my wedding, which I stored on a portable hard drive, that is working with Windows 7 and Linux. I plug the drive in and receive an error. I google the net and find a couple of people having the very same error, but no solution available. I would like to see my wedding pictures.


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## jrm@ (Aug 12, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> But considering this, what kind of advice can you give me for my situation: I have a single private computer at home and it runs FreeBSD 10. In the evening, I would like to see some nice pictures of my wedding, which I stored on a portable hard drive, that is working with Windows 7 and Linux. I plug the drive in and receive an error. I google the net and find a couple of people having the very same error, but no solution available. I would like to see my wedding pictures.



If you're looking for help, the first step is to post the technical details in a new thread.  The most obvious points are the specs for the drive and the errors you see [1].  Details about the partitioning and the filesystem might also be relevant.  So, my advice is to follow up with the problem, so things improve.

[1] Maybe you posted this somewhere already, but a quick scan didn't turn anything up for me.


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## kpa (Aug 12, 2015)

jrm said:


> To each his own, but spending time tinkering and finding the corner cases and submitting bug reports and patches, so that things just work for everyone else can be a nice way for users to contribute back.  I have spent time tinkering and, for me, it's paid off.  I feel like I _own_ my FreeBSD desktop.



I have done some contributions to FreeBSD, mostly on the pkg/poudriere projects. I just don't feel I should restrict myself to using a single OS for everything nor should I feel any kind of "brand loyalty", that can very quickly make you lose sight of what is out there.


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## jrm@ (Aug 12, 2015)

kpa said:


> I just don't feel I should restrict myself to using a single OS for everything nor should I feel any kind of "brand loyalty", that can very quickly make you lose sight of what is out there.



I completely agree.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Aug 12, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> I plug the drive in and receive an error. I google the net and find a couple of people having the very same error, but no solution available.



I'm guessing the reason you didn't find any answer is that it is likely not a problem with specific hardware (which you may have been Googling?) but a matter of knowing how to mount a USB drive by hand when it doesn't automount. This is a trivial situation if you recognize it and go about it the right way. I've had the same aggravation by the way. This thread is not about that, but only mention it because you seem to put a lot of weight on this one thing. 

Edit to add: To me one of the plusses of FreeBSD is that when I found out how to deal with that I made a note, and several years later I can still refer to it. The fact that FreeBSD changes slowly (I call that "stable") makes my note still relevant whereas for Linux I've found the constant churn making my notes irrelevant. Linux is still great, and I use it constantly, but am just pointing out one of my personal points of preference.


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## protocelt (Aug 12, 2015)

A reminder to all: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/freebsd-forums-rules.38922/


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## Patrick Bär (Aug 13, 2015)

OJ said:


> I'm guessing



you guessed wrong

PS: Sorry for being moody. I know you probably did not read the full thread and wanted to help. I was still upset about Anok's silly posts. When somebody with an overwhelming eight months experience with FreeBSD comes up to me, behaves as if he was the god of UNIX and then tells the world that everybody who does not have the same opinion, has no right to use this divine OS and should leave immediately, I tend to become a little bit annoyed 

People like him are obviously not willing to understand, there are people out there who do not have the same life as they do and hence need different things from their computers. Twenty years back, when I had a room in the basement full of old CRTs and humming old boxes, I had no problem to spend a week or two waiting for a solution to a connectivity problem of a little text-box in the corner. But those days are long gone by!

Today I am out in the field. Imagine I am at customer's office and she hands me a portable HDD and says "Ok here are the database dumps and all the documentation, please have a look". So I get my notebook out, open it and FreeBSD starts booting. Her sparkling eyes look at the letters flying around on the screen and she admiringly says "Oh, this is FreeBSD. I heard so much about it, it needs a lot of experience, doesn't it?" So with a swanky grin I log in (console of course), fire up i3, open a console, type a line or two of text and .... "Error ugen0 device not configured, unretryable error, abort abort abort" Her shiny blue eye(s) look at me and say "EXPLAIN!" So I say "Oh, well I guess you should go for lunch with your colleagues now, while I stay here and fix this issue". 

After 30 minutes she is back and I say "Ok well, I have googled the problem, modified some BIOS settings, tried a patch I found somewhere, but to no avail. I opened up a request at the developer's site and we need to wait for an answer. What do you think, shall we make a new appointment in, say, three months, when next release comes up?"

If I haven't been kicked out by then, she might ask "So why don't you use a different OS, one that does not have issues with hardware?". If I answer "You say that because you are a baboon who is just used to her old OS and you are not willing to learn!", how long will it take my FreeBSD notebook to google the next job centre? What do you think?


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## Beastie7 (Aug 13, 2015)

and within those 30 minutes you could've submitted a PR, and while waiting for a patch posted the issue on the mailing lists for a quick answer and/or resolution. But I guess it's easier complaining on the forums where there's little developer attention downplaying FreeBSD for its' lack of hardware support than proactively looking for solution.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Aug 14, 2015)

I'm just an amateur so I have the luxury of running a bunch of machines with different operating systems. If something isn't working on one and I'm in a hurry, it'll work right away on another. Surely a professional has even more tricks than some bungling old fart like me.


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## hashime (Aug 15, 2015)

Oko said:


> Installing vanilla Debian on a random laptop is no different than installing any BSDs.



There are *worlds* between them. Starting with a working X, FN keys, touchpad gestures, brightness etc. etc.



I am a happy FreeBSD Server user(besides the mess after upgrading to 10.2), but on Desktops/Laptops ... It is just not its strong side and probably will never be. That's nothing new, old news. It will fit plenty of people perfectly on a workstation, no doubt, but for the majority of users another OS is more fitting (like Patrick (and me))
Luckily in the opensource world we have the freedom of choice. Use something that works for you and your usecase, be happy with it. In my case Ubuntu works best on my Desktop, even systemd did not give me any headaches(yet).

So no reason to get all worked up over such trivial things. Different people like different stuff.

Patrick Bär FreeBSD 11 fixed my USB problem, maybe you can retry in another year or ask someone to backport it (not sure if that's even possible)


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## wblock@ (Aug 15, 2015)

Yes.  You could check back every year.  Or you could spend ten minutes now submitting a bug report.


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## hashime (Aug 15, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> Yes.  You could check back every year.  Or you could spend ten minutes now submitting a bug report.


I think you highly overestimate the level of involvement and knowledge of the average user.
It's not as straight forward to report a bug either. No GUI  Interface on the OS itself to file a bug, no CLI tool like "ubuntu-bug" makes it too complicated for most Computer users. Plus the reputation of the FreeBSD community being elitist jerks (as partly displayed here in this very thread) may prevent newcomers from reporting something.
Not saying FreeBSD needs such tools, or such users, just offering a different POV.


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## mzperx (Aug 15, 2015)

I tried FreeBSD back in 2013 but stayed with / change to Debian. As written by other you need to pick your OS according to your needs and what I need from a Desktop OS is to be able to watch movies on a flatscreen. I am regularly checking FreeBSD for (1) Intel SNA support and (2) sound through HDMI but I just can't find a simple way / guide on how to do it. The closest I go to it was this: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2014-July/001570.html but new_xorg repo does not seem to exists anymore. Debian works out of the box and I can easily change sound output (laptop / HDMI) with pavucontrol. Anyone would know a clear guide on this I would give FreeBSD another try. Thanks.


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## wblock@ (Aug 15, 2015)

hashime said:


> I think you highly overestimate the level of involvement and knowledge of the average user.


Possibly.  The thing is that with a volunteer project like FreeBSD, helping to fix problems is beneficial to the user experiencing them and to others.  My experience is that if I have a problem with something, not fixing it pretty much guarantees that I will hit the exact same problem again the next time that situation comes up.  It's easy to say "Somebody should do something!".  It takes only a little more effort to be that somebody doing something.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 15, 2015)

hashime said:


> I think you highly overestimate the level of involvement and knowledge of the average user.
> It's not as straight forward to report a bug either. No GUI  Interface on the OS itself to file a bug, no CLI tool like "ubuntu-bug" makes it too complicated for most Computer users. Plus the reputation of the FreeBSD community being elitist jerks(as partly displayed here in this very thread) may prevent newcomers from reporting something.
> Not saying FreeBSD needs such tools, or such users, just offering a different POV.



It's funny because your suggested solutions aren't any more straight forward than setting up an account on Bugzilla or posting the issue on the mailing list; using a web browser. If you want involvement from the community for help, you have to do your part as well. You are only compounding the problem when you complain without perseverance.


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## hashime (Aug 15, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> It's funny because your suggested solutions aren't any more straight forward than setting up an account on Bugzilla or posting the issue on the mailing list; using a web browser. If you want involvement from the community for help, you have to do your part as well. You are only compounding the problem when you complain without perseverance.


I disagree. It's starts by finding out where to report it, searching the web for it, knowing what bugzilla even is, setting up an account, finding out where exactly to post it to, gathering the information needed with various commands most users need to google for.
Or typing one command/clicking one button which gathers all the information needed and submits it to launchpad.
Sure, not a problem for most people here on the forums, but for the *vast* majority of PC users it is.
Most people don't know what a bug report is, how to do it, hell most people don't even know the difference between MS Word and MS Windows. Those people can't use FreeBSD, they can use Ubuntu though (like my mum).

wblock@ I actually agree. But most people don't know this and expect a ready to use system, with working USB, Wifi, graphics etc. FreeBSD website even advertises it like that
"FreeBSD is an advanced computer operating system used to power modern servers, desktops and embedded platforms"
So iI partly understand the confusion/disappointment of some users here, but not the unnecessary rudeness.
What iI don't get is people pushing FreeBSD Desktop to clearly novice users not equipped to handle it, be it because of time constrains or knowledge.

Again, not hating on FreeBSD, iI am happily using it on most of my servers because of its simplicity but iI would never consider it on a Desktop, not even PC-BSD and that comes from a user whose last actively used Windows OS was Windows 95.


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## Beastie7 (Aug 15, 2015)

hashime said:


> I disagree. It's starts by finding out where to report it, searching the web for it, knowing what bugzilla even is, setting up an account, finding out where exactly to post it to, gathering the information needed with various commands most users need to google for.
> Or typing one command/clicking one button which gathers all the information needed and submits it to launchpad.
> Sure, not a problem for most people here on the forums, but for the *vast* majority of PC users it is.
> Most people don't know what a bug report is, how to do it, hell most people don't even know the difference between MS Word and MS Windows. Those people can't use FreeBSD, they can use Ubuntu though (like my mum).



I completely agree, that's why we have such amazing documentation!  However, a lot of stuff in the handbook seems to be hidden from the main site, outdated, or hard to find. The website needs a severe overhaul because it's not navigable at all given the amount of info there is. The devs should pay more attention to stuff like this.


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## Patrick Bär (Aug 15, 2015)

hashime said:


> I think you highly overestimate the level of involvement and knowledge of the average user.



Exactly! In my example story I thought I made clear, that the user, who is not a student, nor a geek, nor a hobby-programmer, doesn't have time or energy or whatever to wait for some bugreport to be read and/or a patch to be written. Imagine some car brand, which breaks down on some random streets. What would you do? Choose an alternative route to avoid the street? File a complaint to the manufacturer and wait at your broken car, until the mechanics have developed a new improved part? Or simply dump that lemon and buy one that can be driven down any street?

Oh I will get a lot of hate for the lemon, but maybe this time some people will understand, that an OS is a tool, not a hobby.


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## hashime (Aug 15, 2015)

Well FreeBSD is for free, the car is not ;-)


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## ANOKNUSA (Aug 15, 2015)

hashime said:


> Sure, not a problem for most people here on the forums, but for the *vast* majority of PC users it is.



And so we've come back around to my original point: that a person does not know something only tells us that they do not know something. It says nothing about the thing of which they are ignorant. The work of the knowledgeable and competent is not invalidated by the ignorance and incompetence of others. There is nothing inherently wrong with being ignorant of or incompetent at something--all of us are ignorant of and incompetent at most things in this world. What's wrong is when people use their own lack of knowledge or skill as a basis to judge the work of others or the quality of a thing they know little or nothing about. The (unfair) assessment of a Unix-like operating system as "good for the desktop" is not and has never been merely a matter of whether it can function as a fully capable desktop--it's whether it can function as a fully capable desktop with as little learning or effort on the part of the user as possible. No *nix system will fully fit that mold. And so it will always be, because the world does not simply conform to any odd person's assumptions. Case in point:



hashime said:


> But most people don't know this and expect a ready to use system, with working USB, Wifi, graphics etc. FreeBSD website even advertises it like that
> "FreeBSD is an advanced computer operating system used to power modern servers, desktops and embedded platforms"



It is absolutely true that FreeBSD is used in those capacities. That does not mean it reads your mind and automatically works to fulfil whatever need you want it to. It does not try to do everything for everybody straight out of the box--that's by design, and one reason many people choose FreeBSD in the first place. If you read that sentence and assumed FreeBSD would automatically work exactly as you wanted, that's on you; it isn't stated that FreeBSD does everything out-of-the-box, and the fact that a FreeBSD install is very minimal isn't exactly hidden information.*  It may indeed be true that FreeBSD in its present state cannot fulfil your needs, at it may be true that FreeBSD will never fulfil your needs, because it's simply not the sort of platform you want it to be. But again, that's not what I take issue with--it's the notion that an operating system cannot function in a particular capacity, simply because it does not do so from the moment one clicks "Install," or work as one might assume it "should just work."

*The website design really does need to be touched-up, though. Too much trivial information crammed on the main page, too much valuable information tucked away.


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## Oko (Aug 15, 2015)

Patrick Bär said:


> Exactly! In my example story I thought I made clear, that the user, who is not a student, nor a geek, nor a hobby-programmer, doesn't have time or energy or whatever to wait for some bugreport to be read and/or a patch to be written.


One issue that I have with FreeBSD community is that they have never had a guts to make clear that FreeBSD is not intended for those users. That should be the first sentence anybody who stumbles upon FreeBSD website can see. FreeBSD is first and foremost research playground and an excellent base for various specialized product. People who need help using Skype to call their grandmother should call Microsoft customer service support.



Patrick Bär said:


> Oh I will get a lot of hate for the lemon, but maybe this time some people will understand, that an OS is a tool, not a hobby.


We perfectly understand that. So why don't you continue to surf the web for those new pair of sneakers  from Windows 8 which came with your laptop and allow us who actually use FreeBSD to study, run business, or simply have fun with our brain cells to do our things.


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## Patrick Bär (Aug 15, 2015)

Really, I opened up this thread for the mere reason of making a decision. Seing the hate and overestimation you two show to those, who criticise FreeBSD is distressing. Look how offensive and insulting you breath fire and brimstone at me for saying, that something is not perfect.


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## scottro (Aug 16, 2015)

I've kind of lost track of the argument here.     I think that it's true--the average user who isn't into computers will want something to just work. FreeBSD really isn't aimed at that user.  Some of the Linux systems are, but they've gotten something like 2 percent of the desktop if that, all divided among their different factions and I would be willing to wager that those who aren't students, geeks and everything else mentioned, have friends who are. 

I would respectfully disagree with Oko for that reason.  My wife, for example, wouldn't come across FreeBSD and say, Gee, I'll download that.  She uses her Mac and her iPad and she's happy.  I don't know of any laymen, so to speak, of my acquaintance, who says, Oh let me download FreeBSD. They're into whatever they're into, rather than operating systems. 

One friend of hers uses Lubuntu, because I set it up for her, and she decided it was worth the fact that she can't easily sync it with her iTunes because she mostly uses her iPad for that.  But again, though she's the so called average user, she had someone who isn't set it up.  In my opinion, if someone wants to avoid Mac for the cost and Windows for any reason (or Mac for any reason, but they're expensive) but doesn't really want to stop their work to learn about the system, one of the Linux systems that is aimed at the desktop, like Mint, is probably the best choice. 

So, anyway, most of the FreeBSD community is nice. The official position, if there is one, is probably what's in the myths section of the advocacy section.


> **BSD is better than (insert other system)*
> This is user opinion only.
> 
> *(insert some other system) is better than *BSD*
> This is user opinion only.



Hrrm, tried to copy and paste from the page, https://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/myths.html#beats I guess it got the fonts too.


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## wblock@ (Aug 16, 2015)

This is not so much a search for something that "just works", it is that "just works" is very subjective.  "That stupid Ferrari doesn't even have a trailer hitch!  That stupid helicopter can't even fly faster than sound!  That stupid goldfish can't even catch a ball!"

Things that are different are not necessarily broken.  Sometimes it is the expectations that are broken.

This thread has probably already gone on too long.  Let's go do something else.


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