# Survey, from 1 to 100 %, the approximation of users using FreeBSD with graphical desktop?



## teo (Jul 12, 2015)

Best regards!

Of all the users that use FreeBSD, what percentage of users use FreeBSD with graphical desktop? What is the reason for using graphical desktop?  Thank you for your comments.


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## tetragir (Jul 13, 2015)

Hi,

I use FreeBSD on one (soon to be more) server without GUI, but also at home with XFCE. The reason is that it's my favourite OS. 
Given that I am only able to use that computer on the weekends, I mostly just browse on the internet...


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## cuq (Jul 15, 2015)

Hi, I use FreeBSD in my laptop (at work and home) with i3. I have a couple of FreeBSD servers without graphical interface too.

cheers


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## hashime (Jul 15, 2015)

I use Linux for the Desktop, FreeBSD on servers without GUI.


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## talsamon (Jul 15, 2015)

At home with GUI (x11-wm/fvwm-crystal), but I am doing many things on the command line.


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## Oko (Jul 16, 2015)

I haven't run X on FreeBSD since 2007. I needed TeXLive at that time so I tried OpenBSD which was the only BSD which used TeXLive as official distribution of TeX and friends (FreeBSD was stucked with teTeX which was dead since 2004).  Never looked back since then as OpenBSD felt much more simple and stable. I use OpenBSD pretty much for everything including this desktop (x11-wm/cwm)  except for large file servers  at work where I moved things from RHEL to FreeBSD to utilize ZFS. I am adding few FreeBSD virtual hosts because I like Jails a lot.

First and foremost I use X to display pdf files as I am doing lots of writing/text processing with TeX. I also do scientific computing so I need to be able to display things drown with math/py-matplotlib.  Other than that usual stuff. My kids watch moves, listing music, family pictures. I guess one could use any of BSDs, OS X, Linux to do the same.

Windows is useless to me as it lacks native scripting language, editors and so many other fundamental things which are available mostly through cygwin. Everything is so complicated and hidden behind the GUI.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 16, 2015)

Oko said:


> Windows is useless to me as it lacks native scripting language, editors and so many other fundamental things which are available mostly through cygwin. Everything is so complicated and hidden behind the GUI.


Dennis Ritchie, when he started teaching at university, said that the first thing he did when they handed him a Windows laptop was to install cygwin so he could get work done.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 16, 2015)

teo said:


> What is the reason for using graphical desktop?



You can't be serious. I prefer a text environment whenever possible and am quite happy using even DOS for that - or SSH into servers. Nevertheless, in a modern world a browser is really a second OS. Sound and images are also very much used by many people. Who doesn't have a digital camera or play at least some videos? Have you tried the text version of Google maps? Simply put, a terminal is wonderful for reading, writing, OS management,  and doing server stuff, but a GUI is still indispensable for most people.

I currently use KDE on FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE as my main machine, but Debian is handy on a second one just for checking things on the web and playing music. I highly recommend FreeBSD for home and office use.


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## Oko (Jul 16, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Dennis Ritchie, when he started teaching at university, said that the first thing he did when they handed him a Windows laptop was to install cygwin so he could get work done.


IIRC Dennis Ritchie was teaching at Princeton University. I have a hard time believing that  story. I am not so familiar with their CS department but I am very familiar with their mathematics department. Until 2001-2001 all their desktops run Solaris or Irix. After that Red Hat maybe some OS X. Once Red Hat became proprietary they were the first one to create RHEL based distro

http://springdale.math.ias.edu/

In my lab we use that distro for scientific computing. 

Sure enough the days of secretaries who were using Solaris, could type TeX using vi/emacs is bygone but except them nobody is using Windows at top notch research schools.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 16, 2015)

Oko I've made this mistake before. It was Brian Kernighan who said that, not Ritchie.


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## kpa (Jul 16, 2015)

The actual percentage? I can't be higher than 10-20% because of FreeBSD's reputation as a server OS most of its life. If you count by FreeBSD installations the figure could be very close to zero.


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## hwong (Jul 17, 2015)

http://bsdstats.org/ provides statistics about BSD operating systems.
I cannot say that these would be the exact answer, but you can make rough estimation with the information(i.e. percentage of FreeBSD-driven Desktop OS, number of installed desktop environment ports, etc)


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## sossego (Jul 17, 2015)

Throw the PS4 into that equation.


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## Oko (Jul 18, 2015)

hwong said:


> http://bsdstats.org/ provides statistics about BSD operating systems.


No it doesn't provide statistics about BSDs. It provides statistics about systems running sysutils/bsdstats script which didn't even work on NetBSD until recently. PC-BSD installs and runs that script by default while I am truly surprised to see even that many OpenBSD installations considering that most of our community is very distrustful and hostile to sysutils/bsdstats. Personally if I have to estimate the number of serious people running a flavour of BSD on the desktop (no multi-boot and toying with the system but honest day to day full time use) I would put OpenBSD as number one, DragonFly distant second followed closely by PC-BSD and vanilla FreeBSD.

*Admins* could post the number of users frequenting this forum and desktop OS from which posts are made. I would bet $50 that the Linux/Android is number one, followed by Windows, OS X (both laptops and iPods), and then few people running vanilla FreeBSD and PC-BSD (probably no more than 15%-20%. I am an outlier running OpenBSD but even many of my posts have been done from Android devices.


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## srobert (Jul 18, 2015)

I don't run servers. I have a laptop that happens to be nearly perfect for running FreeBSD.  I got curious and switched it from whatever Linux distro I was running a few years ago. So, I'm very seldom on the console, and nearly always running X11 with x11-wm/hs-xmonad.


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## hwong (Jul 18, 2015)

Oko said:


> No it doesn't provide statistics about BSDs. It provides statistics about systems running sysutils/bsdstats script which didn't even work on NetBSD until recently. PC-BSD installs and runs that script by default while I am truly surprised to see even that many OpenBSD installations considering that most of our community is very distrustful and hostile to sysutils/bsdstats. Personally if I have to estimate the number of serious people running a flavour of BSD on the desktop (no multi-boot and toying with the system but honest day to day full time use) I would put OpenBSD as number one, DragonFly distant second followed closely by PC-BSD and vanilla FreeBSD.
> 
> *Admins* could post the number of users frequenting this forum and desktop OS from which posts are made. I would bet $50 that the Linux/Android is number one, followed by Windows, OS X (both laptops and iPods), and then few people running vanilla FreeBSD and PC-BSD (probably no more than 15%-20%. I am an outlier running OpenBSD but even many of my posts have been done from Android devices.



That's why I said 'cannot be the exact answer' and 'make rough estimation'. Thank you for pointing out


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 18, 2015)

Oko said:


> most of our community is very distrustful and hostile to sysutils/bsdstats.


I wasn't aware of that. Why?

I run vanilla FreeBSD on the desktop cause it's my development workstation so I have several VMs and servers running at the same time while I work (and whistle at the same time!).


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## topcat (Aug 8, 2015)

I love FreeBSD and run it on every system I have. My office desktop (my company is heavily windows based, so I had to fight our IT dept but they relented), my laptop at home, and a few VMs. Running Windows makes me want to pull my hair out, so convoluted. Mac OS is nice though, but too restrictive.

I use x11-wm/windowmaker and x11-wm/fvwm.

I've never tried OpenBSD on the desktop, but it seems many people use it in this way, so perhaps it's time for an install.


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## scottro (Aug 8, 2015)

For what it's worth, OpenBSD sometimes does things better than FreeBSD. For example, on an old netbook, I couldn't get the touchpad working with x11-drivers/xf86-input-synaptics whereas with OpenBSD it worked out of the box.  It really depends what people want in a desktop.  For someone who just needs a browser and some terminals, the bar isn't that high and almost any Unix or Unix like system will work well.


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## fnoyanisi (Aug 10, 2015)

I am no sysadmin, so managing no servers. However, I run FreeBSD 10.1 on my Toshiba Portage R830 (with an SSD) as the only OS on it, and it is the laptop I use daily. The acpi_toshiba(4) kernel driver allows me to enjoy good integrity with the underlaying hardware.

Using Mate Desktop as I am an old Gnome user.

At home, I use FreeBSD 100% of the time (my wife's ubuntu laptop does not count). At work, it is Windows (not my choice).


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## pkubaj (Aug 10, 2015)

I run FreeBSD on my PC at work, my own desktop PC and my home server. On my desktop PC I currently dual-boot with Debian, but I run it like a hours once a week, so I guess it doesn't count.


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