# Gnome FreeBSD Based Desktop OS?



## Citsakots (Jan 20, 2009)

IÂ´m just wondering what your reaction would be if someone made one? One that is similar to Ubuntu. We already have PCBSD but that is with KDE.


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## Djn (Jan 20, 2009)

More or less "by all means, go ahead". I wouldn't use it (I prefer KDE, and live on CURRENT for home use anyway), but since gnome is a bit annoying to set up and compile by hand I'm sure someone would appreciate it.

It might make sense to do it as a part of the PC-BSD project, though - no need to duplicate everything.


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## vermaden (Jan 20, 2009)

Unfortunnely the all the two desktop versions of FreeBSD are KDE/QT based, but you can add GNOME PBI @ PCBSD or just do pkg_add -r gnome2 to get it.


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## Oko (Jan 20, 2009)

vermaden said:
			
		

> Unfortunnely the all the two desktop versions of FreeBSD are KDE/QT based, but you can add GNOME PBI @ PCBSD or just do pkg_add -r gnome2 to get it.


There are far more than 2 desktop versons of FreeBSD but people in U.S. and Western Europe chose to ignore others. 

TrueBSD (Belorussia) comes with the choice of KDE, Gnome, and Xfce. It is live DVD but it can be installed on the HDD.

RoFreeSBIE is (Romania) desktop distro based on KDE designed to run as LiveCD but it can be installed.

FreeSBIE 1.1 (Italy) with the choice of Xfce/Fluxbox could have been installed on HDD. FreeSBIE 2.1 is LiveCD only but if you you could copy its configuration files and make identical HDD image of it. Unfortunatelly the project is  dead now but it was for a long time by a mile best LiveCD based on FreeBSD.

Evoke former Damn Small BSD is a desktop distro. 

RelaxBSD (China) is also desktop distro. 

List is going on and on. There are about 50 distros based on FreeBSD most of them dead but about 20 of them are still active. 
I think that at least half of those are Destkop distros.


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## calande (Mar 28, 2010)

That would be an excellent initiative to have an Ubuntu with a FreeBSD kernel and FreeBSD-native apps. I now prefer Gnome to KDE too!


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## graudeejs (Mar 28, 2010)

calande said:
			
		

> That would be an excellent initiative to have an Ubuntu with a FreeBSD kernel and FreeBSD-native apps. I now prefer Gnome to KDE too!



Stupid idea.... Ubuntu is such a crap. And what is wrong with FreeBSD own, native userland?
It works so good


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## calande (Mar 28, 2010)

No...I didn't express myself properly...I mean, I'd like the ease of use and the polished feel of Ubuntu, but with FreeBSD, Gnome and applications compiled for FreeBSD. BTW, I have used Ubuntu for a few years now, and it's pretty good! Not saying at all that FreeBSD isn't, quite to the contrary. I just has an even steeper learning curve and requires lots of time, trial and error.


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## rhyous (Mar 28, 2010)

Debian will be making it a reality eventually.
http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/

I think this might have some great benefits.  I see it as another set of workers finding bugs, enhancing FreeBSD. I may or may not use it, but I think it is cool that some want to do this.


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## Bunyan (Mar 28, 2010)

Well, there is *PC-BSD* with its *PBI*. That is a variant of *FreeBSD* which is aimed at the casual user. 
Or you want to port synaptic to *FreeBSD* ?


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## calande (Mar 28, 2010)

PC-BSD uses KDE, not Gnomeâ€¦

Porting synaptic to FreeBSD would be awesome, especially that we only have one Gtk frontend to ports (bpm) and that it has stability issues.


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## Bunyan (Mar 28, 2010)

Many graphical apps have stability issues!
I build my packages from the source code and I feel very
confident with FreeBSD's way of software management.
I can just sympathize that you need an easier
package manager.
BTW. I compiled entire GNOME-2.28.2-from source code.
It took me a day and a night to accomplish the task.
But I deinstalled it (saving the packges before that).
I cannot use GNOME, because it starts slowly (whatever the machine may be).
It sends a lot of error messages that I cannot understand.
I use Fluxbox + some GNOME apps (gedit evince) instead.
*Gedit* and *evince*! 
This is what I need from GNOME.
Then, Gimp and ImageMagick add some extra GNOME dependencies.


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## oliverh (Mar 28, 2010)

In the past Gnome was a pain in the backside to maintain, even Patrick Volkerding of Slackware Linux left Gnome behind because of this fact. I don't know whether this is different today, usually I stay miles away from it.


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## fronclynne (Mar 29, 2010)

*bash:csh:erl:ruby*



			
				rhyous said:
			
		

> Debian will be making it a reality eventually.
> http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/
> 
> I think this might have some great benefits.  I see it as another set of workers finding bugs, enhancing FreeBSD. I may or may not use it, but I think it is cool that some want to do this.



Well, back in the dim and distant 20th century, when I first dishcovah'd FreeBSD, Debian was working on a FreeBSD kernel + Debian linux userland distro of their own.  Good to see it's still almost alpha quality over a decade later.

The difficulty, as I see it is that while FreeBSD's (I mean our) kernel is quite good, it's not enough better (or even perhaps at all) than linux to justify grafting the demonic miscarriage we know as the linux/GNU userland onto it.  A linux kernel with a FreeBSD(-like) userland would be very useful to me (for those ridiculous machines that simply don't run correctly under BSD), and I suspect one or two other people as well.  And a linux system with a tightly integrated base system (sans bash, TYVM) and a hazy cloud of ports would be just fine too.  I used to think that gentoo might suffice, but (and recalling that they were as well trying to replicated the debian kfreebsd/gnu abortion in their own way) but it is just as insane, only with hours of rebuilding from source because they thought everyone wanted a minor increment to libc.

Not that I'm bitter.


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## rhyous (Mar 30, 2010)

> Well, back in the dim and distant 20th century, when I first dishcovah'd FreeBSD, Debian was working on a FreeBSD kernel + Debian linux userland distro of their own. Good to see it's still almost alpha quality over a decade later.



Yeah...I just ran across it a while ago and thought I would check it out.  I guess the project started about a decade ago and then was killed but has recently started back up.

I downloaded the ISO and tried to install it on a virtual machine using VMWare Workstation 6.5 but it didn't work.  So I would have to say it isn't alpha yet either.

Also, I guess i made the assumption that because Ubuntu prefers GNOME that GNU/kFreeBSD would too, but I guess that isn't necessarily true.


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## swirling_vortex (Apr 5, 2010)

GhostBSD was released about a month ago. It's a Gnome-based FreeBSD distribution. 

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ghostbsd


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## Anonymous (Apr 17, 2010)

rhyous said:
			
		

> Yeah...I just ran across it a while ago and thought I would check it out.  I guess the project started about a decade ago and then was killed but has recently started back up.
> 
> I downloaded the ISO and tried to install it on a virtual machine using VMWare Workstation 6.5 but it didn't work.  So I would have to say it isn't alpha yet either.
> 
> Also, I guess i made the assumption that because Ubuntu prefers GNOME that GNU/kFreeBSD would too, but I guess that isn't necessarily true.


I used that how-to:
http://www.hermann-uwe.de/blog/testing-stuff-with-qemu-part-3-debian-gnu-kfreebsd
to install it in Qemu and VirtualBox and had no problems. VMWare i don't know.
It doesn't prefer any environment. I am not sure if i recall correct, might be you need to deselect desktop-environment during tasksel. Might also be if you don't you get Gnome.


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