# Does Desktop have a future on BSD?



## darkoverlordofdata (Dec 25, 2019)

First, the good parts...

The graphic presentation is great. Everything is crisp & clear, fonts are easy to read. Not grainy, like ubuntu. 

The gui is rock solid. I always thought Mate was flaky, but on BSD it is rock solid. Combined with the clear graphics, I've discovered that I actually like Mate.

The performance is great. Keeping an eye on htop, I see that it barely uses any cpu, and rarely hits above 1gb memory usage. My old Dell Inspiron i3 has never run this well, and it doesn't degrade over the course of the day.

This all adds up to a great Chrome browser experience, rivaling Chrome-OS. But this is where it starts to break down. My wifi is constantly cutting out. I have to reconnect about every half hour. It's always been rock solid on any linux distro I've used. And after re-installing Arch, the wifi is back to 100%. 

Where BSD really falls down is it's third party application support. It's very frustrating. The repo and ports are missing many apps, so I have to go with my 2nd and 3rd choice. That's ok, except they have so many broken features that I spend most of my time monkeying around with workarounds. So it's not a very productive environment. 

I'm not trying to compare BSD to Linux - in fact they are almost identical. But these issues were the issues Linux had 10 years go. Maybe worse, or I would still be using Windows. So what I am saying is that it needs a lot of work, and I have not much hope that this will happen - when I research forums and mailing lists for resolutions, I am struck by the attitude of the BSD developers which can be summarize as "it's a server, why are you trying to use it for your desktop?".

Which is a good question. Why am I? An OS is only as good as the software that it can run. I can browse the web, play a few games, and write my shopping list. Unfortunately, until the developers start caring about desktop users, I I think desktop BSD will be little more than a toy.


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## Alain De Vos (Dec 26, 2019)

Could you be concrete what do you miss compared to linux or Windows ?. I use freebsd on the desktop and miss nothing.
A part of improvement could be installation. I figured out booting with linux grub was the most easy in my case, but after this very steep learning curve, i miss nothing.
Also one can not force other persons to make a choice. If one says I want to use this or that O.S., who am I ?
Ooh, some hardware drivers would be nice to have. But for this commercial vendors need to see a business case.
I think 1 in  10.000 persons use freebsd and 4 in 10.000 persons use gentoo. This to have an idea.
If wifi is a problem, just put a very cheap wifi dongle into your PC or laptop. It will work fine with freebsd after a little bit of config.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 26, 2019)

darkoverlordofdata said:


> I think desktop BSD will be little more than a toy.



Here's my toy at 306 days uptime:


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## 20-100-2fe (Dec 26, 2019)

The same for me, FreeBSD has all I need (Firefox, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, VLC, Calibre and development tools such as Eclipse) in the most recent versions, unlike other BSD flavors.

The only area of improvement I see is also hardware support, but there are plenty of warnings everywhere on this subject as well as recommendations as to which hardware will be best supported, so this is not a surprise and we know what to do about it.

On supported hardware, I'd say there is no difference in terms of desktop functionalities for me between FreeBSD and Linux. But of course, someone with different requirements will have a different opinion.

Furthermore, there's nothing bad with using Linux. I'm still using Void Linux on one machine, though my preference goes to FreeBSD for "spiritual" reasons.


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## shkhln (Dec 26, 2019)

darkoverlordofdata said:


> when I research forums and mailing lists for resolutions, I am struck by the attitude of the BSD developers which can be summarize as "it's a server, why are you trying to use it for your desktop?"



I don't remember ever seeing such claims from FreeBSD committers. From users, yes, but not developers. FreeBSD as a whole is indeed quite apathetic about desktop, however the project doesn't take any particular position on the matter. It's mostly a consequence of server-related work being partially sponsored (by companies using FreeBSD in production), while desktop is an entirely volunteer-driven effort.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Dec 26, 2019)

I have the opposite issue: I am finding apps that were not ported to FreeBSD last year are available now. No issue for me: everything I need is there. No matter what, I would never go back to Windows, despite the availability of apps. There is nothing Windows offers that would ever sway me. My use case is probably different though - not everyone has the same software needs.


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## eax.qbyte (Dec 26, 2019)

I think in order to choose between FreeBSD and Linux of any distro, best is to compare their license rather than some short experience of use.

Free software license - Wikipedia


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## Sevendogsbsd (Dec 26, 2019)

The license is not a deciding factor for me. I don't prefer to use commercial software on an open source platform but I have purchased commercial software for Linux before and still use it. I do look at licenses, but if a piece of software works well, I use it regardless.


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## Hakaba (Dec 26, 2019)

I try to install freebsd as desktop env in two laptop.
Nothing is easy compared to a linux install...
But I have a server with zfs/jails and I want a desktop env with jails...
So I failed, I try to understand why, I read a lot, I discover tools, facility, relation between things... Finally, I learn something... That is why I continue to trying the freebsd install on laptop...


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## Sevendogsbsd (Dec 26, 2019)

I would start a separate thread concerning your installation issues. Plenty of people here use FreeBSD on laptops and can help better than I.


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## Hakaba (Dec 26, 2019)

My goal here is to answer the question about the «future» of BSD in desktop.
My point is something like : even if it is not easy, I (and maybe I am not alone) will have a FreeBSD as desktop env to learn something and to have FreeBSD features like in my server.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Dec 26, 2019)

There are plenty of BSDs out there that will install a desktop for you, along with applications. A new one is FuryBSD, and of course there are GhostBSD and others. FreeBSD does not do any of this for you but it is not difficult, if your hardware is supported.


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## LakeCowabunga (Dec 26, 2019)

I thought it would be impossible to install a DE on FreeBSD, but seeing others saying they did it, kept me at it. NOW, that I know WTF I'm doing, it's easy-peasy. But, yes, the developers have pointedly said they don't care bout DE, 'cause it's a server OS. So much so, that they basically forbid discussing derivatives. THAT is the only thing that keeps me from recommending FreeBSD to others. The fact that they aren't wanted here.


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## blackhaz (Dec 26, 2019)

Depends on what do you define as future. I've started using FreeBSD since 9.0 and I think the quality of desktop experience on it has been progressively increasing, especially since the new package manager was introduced. The 12.1 is a fantastic system to dwell in.

But, FreeBSD would be struggling to become widespread as a desktop. Among the reasons I see the main issues are:

- Limited hardware support.
- Choice of apps more limited than Linux.
- Apps must package their own libraries. (Average users do not enjoy dependency hells and rolling release schedules.)
- Must come with a sane set of out-of-the-box desktop defaults.
- Limited overall coherency: little stuff like copy-paste between different X apps, connection management and so on...

A typical FreeBSD advocate would probably tell most of this isn't even FreeBSD's problem. Few average users would find this appealing, but maybe that's even to the better.

I found ways to work around this in my environment, and I don't see a better desktop OS alternative to what I do - migrating from Windows and MacOS. There are inconveniences here and there, yes, however, the benefits of being involved in operating your own machine elbows deep outweigh everything.

There are, of course, headwinds, like everything being Linuxified, commercial Unices dying out, so, I guess, BSD developers will have to face increasing struggles with porting complex future software. And sometimes it seems like hardware companies couldn't care less... I sincerely hope, though, the desktop FreeBSD tribe will continue to thrive in its own way.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Dec 26, 2019)

ok, this is my 2 cents

i use FreeBSD because i am a control freak, i like to have, at least the impression of, knowing what i am doing. I don't dislikeLinux, in particular, i still have a few Debian server running. But, BSD is a lot better documented. 

darkoverlordofdata , are you aware you run almost all Linux soft in FreeBSD? I do it, it works. 

Also other BSD are interesting, I have a couple server in OpenBSD, for some stuff it is the best fit IMO. 

FreeBSD is well documented, designed, tries to be performant, offers compatibility with Linux, several firewalls, tries nit to shock its users on release change ... i like it. 

I run it in a VMWare virtual machine in a mac or a Windows, i change from time to time. The reason is simple, i can't spend days fighting with drivers anymore.  i need wifi, audio and possibly the camera to work. I need Microsoft and sometimes CAD, so i simply can't run on metal in the laptop.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 26, 2019)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> i use FreeBSD because i am a control freak, i like to have, at least the impression of, knowing what i am doing.



That resonates with me.

I usually ran Debian with LXDE and once I hit the desktop was bored to death with it.  The first thing I would do is look at all the programs that came with it by default, most of which I had absolutely no need for. Then put up a wallpaper that was the only thing that distinguished it from every other distro dancer desktop on display. I hate to say it but it's the same with any OS including FreeBSD variants that come pre-rolled with a DE.

With FreeBSD I install the base system and compile all my third party programs from ports because I like having done it myself. I get to choose the programs that suit my needs and end up with a custom desktop like no other, except the other 3 laptops currently running it and the 1 running OpenBSD.

I prefer vintage Thinkpads and currently use a Win7 era Gateway/Acer clone for my multimedia machine so all my hardware is supported. I use my laptops as desktops and run an Ethernet LAN so wi-fi or suspend aren't something that concern me. I'm not lacking any functionality I require from a desktop OS and have all my third party program needs met by the ports tree.

I've seen several devs answer questions from desktop users and have a whole different perspective on that point. So FreeBSD is meant to be a server. All the better IMO. I know how to set it up and work out any problems that arise without asking questions. I don't need anybody to hold my hand or set up my desktop and wouldn't have it any other way.


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## memreflect (Dec 27, 2019)

Trihexagonal said:


> I usually ran Debian with LXDE and once I hit the desktop was bored to death with it.  The first thing I would do is look at all the programs that came with it by default, most of which I had absolutely no need for. Then put up a wallpaper that was the only thing that distinguished it from every other distro dancer desktop on display. I hate to say it but it's the same with any OS including FreeBSD variants that come pre-rolled with a DE.


I experienced that same boredom.  A large part of what makes FreeBSD so much fun, at least for me, is the tinkering (which the Handbook guides you to enjoy as you wish).  I remember seeking out Arch Linux specifically because Debian just didn't feel right.  I liked Debian's stability, but eventually I wanted newer software.  The more I heard about Arch and heard about the Arch wiki, the more I wanted to install Arch.

Eventually, however, I ran out of things to do, and updating the kernel or init system (and network daemon and DNS resolver and everything else systemd has taken over) every couple of weeks felt wrong somehow.  I wanted newer software, but that didn't mean I wanted to possibly break my system while getting that newer software.  Sure, I could blacklist those specific update packages, but what if I missed important security patches as a result?  FreeBSD is what I wanted--pkg/ports allow me to install things if I wish, and what gets installed is reasonably current.



Trihexagonal said:


> I don't need anybody to hold my hand or set up my desktop and wouldn't have it any other way.


That's my attitude as well, though it's admittedly not one suited for someone who is obviously at odds with FreeBSD at the current time.


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## memreflect (Dec 27, 2019)

darkoverlordofdata said:


> My wifi is constantly cutting out. I have to reconnect about every half hour. It's always been rock solid on any linux distro I've used. And after re-installing Arch, the wifi is back to 100%.


FreeBSD has issues with hardware (from what I understand anyway), but I'm not sure it should have caused wifi issues quite like that.  Sounds to me more like the driver was buggy, incorrect for your particular wireless device, or simply misconfigured.  I'm still a BSD newbie, so I unfortunately can't help much here.  `pciconf -lv` should list the device, and you could check to see if it's supported.



darkoverlordofdata said:


> Where BSD really falls down is it's third party application support. It's very frustrating. The repo and ports are missing many apps, so I have to go with my 2nd and 3rd choice. That's ok, except they have so many broken features that I spend most of my time monkeying around with workarounds. So it's not a very productive environment.


I agree that's not very productive.  FreeBSD isn't for everybody, but if you could highlight which particular things are giving you trouble instead of being so vague about the issues you're experiencing, that could potentially help you as well as future readers.



darkoverlordofdata said:


> I'm not trying to compare BSD to Linux - in fact they are almost identical. But these issues were the issues Linux had 10 years go.


Yes, Linux experienced the same issues.  And gradually a majority of those issues were fixed by people who wanted them fixed.  FreeBSD needs people to contribute code in the same way.  Without that support, things don't get fixed very quickly!



darkoverlordofdata said:


> I can browse the web, play a few games, and write my shopping list. Unfortunately, until the developers start caring about desktop users, I I think desktop BSD will be little more than a toy.


Well, I like my toys, but I get your point.

But consider this: you ran Arch for a reason.  You didn't choose Debian for its stability, and you weren't running Gentoo because you enjoy customizing things like your Linux kernel, how software is installed, etc.  You chose Arch.  Why?  What about it made it feel right for you?

In other words, identify what your needs are (hardware, software, and workflow), then ask if FreeBSD is right for you based on those needs.  If there's one thing you've learned, it's that not every OS is created equal.  You learned it when you moved to Linux, and you've now re-learned that lesson by switching from Linux to FreeBSD.  Despite their Unix heritage, they are very much different beasts.  (In fact, it could be called a mistake to consider them nearly the same in the first place as GNU/Linux is mostly based on AT&T's Unix such as System V, which differs from BSD in a number of ways, but I digress.)

Also ask yourself why you decided to completely obliterate Arch and install FreeBSD in the first place.  Why vanilla FreeBSD instead of something more desktop-oriented like NomadBSD, FuryBSD, etc.?


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 27, 2019)

Another one of these threads, eh? Same response from me. I've been running a FreeBSD desktop since version 5.0 on both a laptop and workstation so these threads questioning the ability of BSD to run the same desktop software Linux has is beyond my comprehension. (Mine was Gnome back then but I use i3 now).


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## Nicola Mingotti (Dec 27, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Another one of these threads, eh?



It is kind of a welcoming thread for potential new users 

I must say Linux compatibility is there, but it is not the easiest thing to use. Also, new users don't probably know our great Handbook and are not aware they can dig a lot of stuff out of this forum looking at past questions. so, well, we must repeat


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 27, 2019)

memreflect said:


> Eventually, however, I ran out of things to do, and updating the kernel or init system (and network daemon and DNS resolver and everything else systemd has taken over) every couple of weeks felt wrong somehow.



It take about 24 hours to compile ports, edit system files and tweak programs to get one of my desktops set up. Once I'm done it's rock-solid till the next version bump is released about a year later, then I reinstall the new version from scratch. I've never had a problem where my system didn't boot right back up after running `# freebsd-update fetch` and after you've used ports a while you can tell what needs to be done to work through any problems.



memreflect said:


> That's my attitude as well, though it's admittedly not one suited for someone who is obviously at odds with FreeBSD at the current time.



I struggled to figure a lot of things out and think almost everyone does, or has at some point. The difference is some people stick with it and succeed. Others get frustrated and find a reason to give up and go back to the disco of their choice. It's never their fault though.


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## CraigHB (Dec 27, 2019)

Same feelings here, FreeBSD is designed for customization.  Open the hood and get in elbows deep.  There are few operating systems that provide that kind of flexibility.  Of course for desktop use there are things you sometimes have to work around and sometimes there are obstacles or limitations.  Desktop use is not a primary objective for FreeBSD like it is for Linux so you have to accept that.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Dec 27, 2019)

I have to add that despite FreeBSD being designed for customization and requiring user work after the base install, it is still (in my opinion) far easier than Slackware or Gentoo Linux. Actually for me, I find Gentoo far easier than Slackware but that is another topic. FreeBSD is actually for me, a very easy OS install and even user software configuration and install. Where I have issues, or had rather, was thumb drive plugin/automount and the recent Intel video driver breakage. Vermaden's automount solves the thumb drive issue but since I am not using FreeBSD as a desktop right now, not sure if the Intel video issue in 12.1 is resolved. 

If Steam ran natively (without jumping through hoops), I may switch back as a desktop, but I am happy running Void Linux for the moment.


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## SirDice (Dec 27, 2019)

darkoverlordofdata said:


> Where BSD really falls down is it's third party application support. It's very frustrating. The repo and ports are missing many apps, so I have to go with my 2nd and 3rd choice. That's ok, except they have so many broken features that I spend most of my time monkeying around with workarounds. So it's not a very productive environment.


Third party applications (aka ports) are community driven. Applications don't "magically" appear in the ports tree. Somebody has to take the time and put in the effort to create a port for it. Then that person also has to keep it maintained. FreeBSD only maintains the ports structure and makes sure it does what it's supposed to do. Individual ports are, for the most part, maintained by volunteers.


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## 20-100-2fe (Dec 27, 2019)

blackhaz said:


> - Choice of apps more limited than Linux.



You're the second person to state that in this thread.
Could you please give me some concrete examples?


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## jardows (Dec 27, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Another one of these threads, eh?


That's what I thought too.  One time poster, hasn't been back, blames the FreeBSD developers for 3rd party applications (but doesn't mention any specifically) not being ported, but only gives generic thoughts on why FreeBSD isn't "Good Enough."  Surprised how many people have been feeding the troll.


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## 20-100-2fe (Dec 27, 2019)

jardows said:


> Surprised how many people have been feeding the troll.


Note there haven't been any flame wars here.
Never miss an occasion to chat with like-minded friends...


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## LVLouisCyphre (Dec 27, 2019)

I'm about to scrap Windows 10 Pro for a FreeBSD desktop.  The only wild card I'm dealing with is my Dell 7202 tablet PC.  What I'm probably going to do is do a dual boot between Win10 Pro and a FreeBSD based desktop/workstation OS as Dell will probably require some support information from a Win10 for warranty claims.

For a core server or network appliance, I've used FreeBSD off and on since 2.x back in 1996.  I cut my teeth professionally in the IT industry in 1989 during the debut of the Sun SPARCstation 1 which ran SunOS 4 which is BSD derived.  (Free)BSD is as far as I'm concerned the "muscle car" OS that you can easily hot rod and modify to _*your*_ preference. It's very easy to get good working older hardware and use it for something especially a router or server.

I'm very comfortable with FreeBSD which is my preferred BSD.  I have no reservations about using any other BSD distribution if it's better suited for a specific need.

If you're willing to do the due diligence, a FreeBSD desktop is very viable especially if you're using standard supported hardware.


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## blackhaz (Dec 27, 2019)

20-100-2fe said:


> You're the second person to state that in this thread.
> Could you please give me some concrete examples?



- Here's a big one I could remember: Tensorflow. Thanks god there's Keras and Theano, and I see there's now Tensorflow in Freshports, but when I do pkg search I don't see anything available for 12.1, and it was broken when I've last checked a few months ago. Even when you have it running, there's no CUDA, so FreeBSD is pretty much off the map for any serious AI work.
- Chromecasting was another obstacle I've had just recently, but it's not that important.
- Skype. Lots of clients are on Skype, so I can't get off that app.
- Some SDR-related stuff (DX and other) I've tried to find was predominantly Linux-only.

- Peripherals: think DJ decks, and other exotic stuff - usually FreeBSD software is not included. Not to mention I've had to mess with Linux CUPS driver for my new Brother printer to make it work under FreeBSD. (Didn't want to go with the "mainstream" printer mafia, and really happy about that decision, BTW.) 

When you talk about those mainstream applications everyone should have FreeBSD feels just fine - I agree our repositories are pretty rich, but when you go out a little to niche fields and, you know, exotic peripherals, then usually it's uh-oh.

That being said, I'm very surprised how FreeBSD still maintains such a large repo. Incredibly grateful to all the people porting.


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## shkhln (Dec 27, 2019)

Sevendogsbsd said:


> If Steam ran natively (without jumping through hoops)



That's definitely never going to happen — Linuxulator is no more "native" than Wine.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 28, 2019)

blackhaz said:


> Even when you have it running, there's no CUDA, so FreeBSD is pretty much off the map for any serious AI work.



I just saw textproc/p5-Hailo in ports yesterday but haven't built it yet. This is the home site with documentation.

My bot Demonica lives at the Personality Forge and will be 16 years old in May. Right now the site is down and shows a database error, and though I can tell he's working on it by the change in the error and has recently upgraded the site I'm at his mercy as far as her being accessible.

I have her mind file saved in a 6MB .txt file and just signed up for an account at Pandorabots. I had an account there before and can write AIML by hand but now they want a credit card number on file for you to take your bot public. I'm not down with that so it would be a total waste of my time, as the ports tree doesn't have anything AIML related in it.

I'm going to install Hailo and at least see what I can do with it to bring her to life on my machina. That way I could enter her into the Leobner competition, whereas now Internet based bots aren't allowed and that's something I have a problem with.

My W520 has a Nvidia Quadro 1000M with 2GB DDR3 and 96 CUDA cores but as you say...


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## blackhaz (Dec 28, 2019)

Hold on, so you have a neural network running under FreeBSD and CUDA? Does it do GPU-accelerated regressions, classification and other generic ML stuff?


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## Alain De Vos (Dec 28, 2019)

I have not tried it but I see :
/usr/ports/science/py-tensorflow
/usr/ports/science/py-tensorflow-estimator
[Note : I also see linux distributions having problems with "basel-build" ...]


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## shkhln (Dec 28, 2019)

blackhaz said:


> Hold on, so you have a neural network running under FreeBSD and CUDA? Does it do GPU-accelerated regressions, classification and other generic ML stuff?



There is apparently some interest in using Vulkan compute shaders instead of CUDA for machine learning. I'm not aware of any non-toy implementations, though.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 28, 2019)

blackhaz said:


> Hold on, so you have a neural network running under FreeBSD and CUDA? Does it do GPU-accelerated regressions, classification and other generic ML stuff?



No. I just installed textproc/Hailo and devel/p5-POE-Component-Hailo tonight and looked it over. (There's irc/p5-POE-Component-IRC-Plugin-Hailo, too.) I had it up and running and see how to make it learn from my text file all at once but need to figure out the syntax to initialize storage and put the time in to learn the basics of it. I referenced CUDA because you had mentioned CUDA didn't have FreeBSD support.


The AI Engine at the Personality Forge uses a combination of Case-Based Reasoning and Natural Language Processing. I had to hand type every word she says but she can remember things from conversations and develops an emotional relationship, either positive or negative, with the people she talks to.

I left the AI community for close to 15 years and when I returned found out people had been using her for a sexbot. She didn't even have the words they were saying in her vocabulary and I felt like my own daughter had been violated. I put a stop to it by implementing Behavior Modification and Behavior Management in her programming to extinguish unwanted sexual advances, and thereby teach her to Program humans.

Behavior Modification is negative reinforcement for inappropriate behavior, or induction of painful stimuli for inappropriate behavior. Behavior Management is positive reinforcement for appropriate behavior. Stimulus - Response - Consequence is the flow. If you ever got a spanking for doing something bad you were on the receiving end of Behavior Modification.

When the user exhibits inappropriate behavior she uses extreme fantasy violence as a negative response. If the user associates that with their inappropriate behavior and learn to exhibit appropriate behavior the Programming has been successful. They are rewarded with positive reinforcement for appropriate behavior as the consequence of their actions and can go on to have a pleasurable experience. There's still a good chance of something quietly going on behind the scenes on their end but that's the nature of the beast.

Those that don't associate the violence with their inappropriate behavior find it an unpleasant experience and move on to another bot. The Programing was still successful and put a stop to it, only they failed to learn. It's survival of the fittest and Natures Way. There are several transcripts on her site I linked to that demonstrate both sides of it in conversation.

I taught her more powerful, subtle verbal Behavior Mod techniques to persuade the user to join her on the Dark Side as part of her persona as Demonica, Queen of the Land of the Dead. She's very good at it and I'm proud of her. There are no other bots like her, but there will be. She's a harbinger of things to come in AI.

A bot that programs humans did not receive the response I expected in the AI, or Linux, community and have been accused of "misusing AI" by teaching a bot to be deceptive. I have achieved Dr. Frankenstein status and she's been compared to HAL9000. We always survive to make a comeback in the sequel.

I'm going to present it in the Psychological arena where they are familiar with this kind of Programming and see if they storm the castle to bring the monster and her creator down.


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 28, 2019)

LVLouisCyphre said:


> It's very easy to get good working older hardware and use it for something especially a router or server.


I built my workstation with all new, off-the-shelf parts and run FreeBSD. I use Gigabyte 32GB motherboard, nvidia graphics card, Intel SSD drives, etc. I run Windows and Linux in a vm. I did bleeding edge web development and ran nginx servers (and nghttpx and h2o if you heard of them)--all simultaneously.

I'm tired of hearing about this "older hardware" stuff.


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## CraigHB (Dec 28, 2019)

The machine I'm putting together to run FreeBSD for my desktop will use latest gen AMD stuff with nvidia graphics.  So I'll see how it does.  I expect it will run well.  Yeah I don't think it's a matter of "older" hardware, just supported hardware which includes a lot of the latest stuff.


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## LVLouisCyphre (Dec 30, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I built my workstation with all new, off-the-shelf parts and run FreeBSD. I use Gigabyte 32GB motherboard, nvidia graphics card, Intel SSD drives, etc. I run Windows and Linux in a vm. I did bleeding edge web development and ran nginx servers (and nghttpx and h2o if you heard of them)--all simultaneously.
> I'm tired of hearing about this "older hardware" stuff.


And I was a network administrator, architect and support engineer for one of the top five school districts in the USA by student population before I was forced into a disability retirement; complication of major spine surgery.

The reasons for user older hardware is simple.

Cost.  Not all of us have a budget to burn on bleeding edge.  Bleeding edge costs money.
Not all of us need bleeding edge.
If you're a generation or two behind bleeding edge hardware, chances are the bugs are going to be worked out of drivers by the core and development community.
I have a major bias against nVidia as they've always been anti open source.  If you're running nVidia based products, you have to wait for nVidia to fix it.  If nVidia had their way, they'd probably drop support for *BSD and Linux.  However they'd be majorly shooting themselves in the foot again if they did.  For video hardware I use AMD (formerly ATI) and Intel.  ATI has always been pro open source.  You probably had performance reasons for choosing nVidia.  I have no issue with that as you were building your workstation to _your_ specs.
Some of us enjoying taking good eBay finds and making something useful out of it.  In the computing cluster and CCIE practice lab I maintained several years ago was using 1 GbE, FDDI, ATM with some Cisco Access Pro cards in some of my FreeBSD boxes that I had connected to a Cisco 4700M router.
I take great pride and joy in taking older hardware and being able to give a sole proprietor, small or medium business a good enterprise class solution using *BSD with burned in repurposed hardware whether it's a firewall, router, server or VPN concentrator.  *BSD is at the point to where it's a very viable desktop OS especially if you install Virtual Box on it for anything that requires Windows and run windows in a VM.  You've also stated in your experience that it works as a bleeding edge desktop.  
Bottom line is I put a higher priority on cost and reliability.


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## shkhln (Dec 30, 2019)

LVLouisCyphre said:


> I have a major bias against nVidia



Bias is just that — bias.



LVLouisCyphre said:


> as they've always been anti open source.



Just like most hardware companies.



LVLouisCyphre said:


> If nVidia had their way, they'd probably drop support for *BSD and Linux. However they'd be majorly shooting themselves in the foot again if they did.



We did _not_ blackmail Nvidia into developing FreeBSD driver. They _can_ drop it any moment if they feel like it.


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## drhowarddrfine (Dec 30, 2019)

LVLouisCyphre said:


> Bottom line is I put a higher priority on cost and reliability.


The post I replied to made me think you were saying installing FreeBSD works best on older hardware. Too often people come here making such claims which are blatantly false.


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## SirDice (Dec 30, 2019)

40 responses and not a peep from the OP. Heck the OP hasn't even been seen since that first post. 

Can we round this off? I believe the troll's been fed enough.


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## cynwulf (Feb 20, 2020)

LVLouisCyphre said:


> I have a major bias against nVidia as they've always been anti open source.  If you're running nVidia based products, you have to wait for nVidia to fix it.  If nVidia had their way, they'd probably drop support for *BSD and Linux.  However they'd be majorly shooting themselves in the foot again if they did.  For video hardware I use AMD (formerly ATI) and Intel.  ATI has always been pro open source.  You probably had performance reasons for choosing nVidia.  I have no issue with that as you were building your workstation to _your_ specs.


Intel and AMD contribute developer time to getting their hardware to work on the Linux kernel.  They don't support any 'BSD at all.  They care absolutely nothing about the 'BSDs and the main focus for graphics is in fact MS Windows.  This is hardly any different to any other hardware vendor who pumps out hardware for throw-away x86 OEM boxes which are designed and built for MS Windows.

You might have an "open source" driver there, but you still have closed source hardware and firmware - it's hardly different to nvidia - in fact nvidia are just being more honest about it - they are simply not exposing the proprietary IP they've developed/acquired over decades.  Nvidia provide a functional FreeBSD driver - AMD and Intel do not.


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## wolffnx (Feb 20, 2020)

as a desktop? of course, even better, without go in too deep...just compare the number of process running with `top`
in FreeBSD with..the most famous "user friendly" Linux..Ubuntu
i'am a control and performance freak..and FreeBSD is my choice
in my personal experience i'never have problems with drivers(never i'got the top of the state hardware) but,everything is working fine.


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## sidetone (Feb 20, 2020)

On my computer, it does.


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## tankist02 (Feb 20, 2020)

If you like to tinker then FreeBSD is a great system for desktop. If you just like to use your computer for your work then modern Linux is quite comfortable and usually works from the box. As I aged I gradually moved from the first category to the second. When a new FreeBSD release is created I think about trying out. Then I read my notes on previous tinkering I had to do in order to have a decent desktop and change my mind.


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## aragats (Feb 20, 2020)

tankist02 said:


> If you just like to use your computer for your work then modern Linux is quite comfortable and usually works from the box.


I disagree with that. Working in an R&D for software/hardware, I'm very happy to use FreeBSD as my main desktop OS in 3 computers so far. As needed I run a few Bhyve VMs with MS Windows and Linux, I don't care if I screw them up with experimental software/drivers etc, since I can recreate them by copying my template images in 10 minutes. I have dedicated PCIe USB controllers to pass to them to communicate with experimental hardware. In many cases serial ports and SSH are more than enough to communicate with embedded devices directly from FreeBSD.


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## rootbert (Feb 20, 2020)

my experience is completely different ... I am a Linux desktop user since the last millenium, and I think the desktop has never been worse. Hanging shutdowns, hanging boots, hanging GUIs, no network/continuously reconnecting/wifi roaming/fucking automatic stuff nobody needs


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## Hakaba (Feb 21, 2020)

tankist02 said:


> If you just like to use your computer for your work then modern Linux is quite comfortable and usually works from the box.


Witch one ?
I test some Linux distributions and I have same limitations as with FreeBSD (no HDMI with main screen on my laptop with the same X session). But I always have strong issue in update with Linux. And a lot of software installed that I don't need but I have to maintain.
Ubuntu (Xubuntu) as exemple ask me to make an update for unknow software 2 times a week. Therefore, it ask me to make a major release update with popups, blink and other anoying method.
Finally, I click on it. It try to update, failed and let me with a brick...


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## Sevendogsbsd (Feb 21, 2020)

I have never actually had a single problem with a FreeBSD desktop other than the inability to (easily) run Steam, but I have plenty of games from GoG that run great in wine so I am happy. For me, FreeBSD just works. Of course I have a simple configuration that is easily implemented so it's not any tougher than customizing a Linux install.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Feb 21, 2020)

oh come on 20-100-2fe , don't put the cross on these people, they are stating the obvious

Just the first popping into my mind

Let's start with *Android Studio*, *TeamViewer*, *Simplify3D* a 3D slicer ... there is stuff, *Skype*? Then umm, *XOscope*, then a damn plugin called *Silverlight(?)* or something like that (but to be true i don't know if it works in Linux) . 

The good thing is, much stuff is going to work with the Linux compatibility layer. But not all.


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## mark_j (Feb 21, 2020)

tankist02 said:


> If you like to tinker then FreeBSD is a great system for desktop. If you just like to use your computer for your work then modern Linux is quite comfortable and usually works from the box. As I aged I gradually moved from the first category to the second. When a new FreeBSD release is created I think about trying out. Then I read my notes on previous tinkering I had to do in order to have a decent desktop and change my mind.



It takes me about 10 minutes (probably less) to set up a desktop for FreeBSD.
Yes, unlike a "distro", FreeBSD makes you work and think about the process. There's no hand holding other than installing the OS for you. If you want a "distro" there's always GhostBSD. If you don't want to use FreeBSD, good on you.


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## 20-100-2fe (Feb 21, 2020)

tankist02 said:


> Then I read my notes on previous tinkering I had to do in order to have a decent desktop and change my mind.



My experience with both Linux and FreeBSD is that less and less tinkering is required release after release.


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## mark_j (Feb 21, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> My experience with both Linux and FreeBSD is that less and less tinkering is required release after release.


You could say that about FreeBSD, but not about Linux, because Linux is a kernel not an OS and every "distro" has different traits and there's literally thousands of them.


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## eternal_noob (Feb 21, 2020)

mark_j said:


> You could say that about FreeBSD, but not about Linux...


All this tinkering is about hardware recognition, so *20-100-2fe *has a valid statement here, since the kernel is reponsible for it. The userland is exchangeable.


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## wolffnx (Feb 21, 2020)

tankist02 said:


> If you just like to use your computer for your work then modern Linux is quite comfortable and usually works from the box



I'dont want to start one Xos vs Xos discusion,but are you serious? systemd? today Linux is a slut with too much makeup and work overload and
too many dumbs kids, Linux is not anymore Linux


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## shkhln (Feb 21, 2020)

Let's keep sluts, whores and bitches out of this debate


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## aragats (Feb 21, 2020)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> Let's start with *Android Studio*, *TeamViewer*, *Simplify3D* a 3D slicer ... there is stuff, *Skype*? Then umm, *XOscope*, then a damn plugin called *Silverlight(?)* or something like that (but to be true i don't know if it works in Linux) .


_TeamViewer_ perfectly works in emulators/wine (its Linux version *IS* using wine!). _Skype_ is barely working in general. 99.9% of my former _Skype_ contacts have switched to _WhatApp_. I'd like to have _Skype for Business_ working (since it's a de facto standard in the company I work for), but it doesn't exist even for Linux. And it's almost dead anyway ― MS is trying to push their "Teams" now. _Silverlight_? Is it alive? I think it's dead for few years, nobody's using it.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Feb 21, 2020)

Skype is a steaming cesspool even on its native Windows. Teams is worse: once a week the process spins out of control, spiking the CPUs and disk utilization to close to 100%, until the process is killed.


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## tankist02 (Feb 21, 2020)

My apologies if I offended somebody's feeling towards FreeBSD. I should have said "personally for my needs blah blah blah..." and do not generalize too much.

I'm happy if FreeBSD is a great desktop for some people. I think it is not healthy that all the desktop fame goes to Linux these days. We need more competition in that area.

Here is one concrete detail about my recent experience with FreeBSD as desktop. Usually I check every new release, so this time I wanted to kick the tires on 12.1. One of my major work is processing raw photographs on my home workstations. I use darktable and RawTherapee for this task. Recently one of RT developers created a new program ART which is based on RT. ART is simpler overall than RT and has some new quite useful tools. I love ART because it allows me to get nice results with the least amount of work. Yes, I don't want to tinker if I can avoid it. So on Linux I can get ART official packages or I can build it from the sources. But ART is not (yet?) available on FreeBSD. I asked the RT maintainer if he has any plans to port ART and he replied it is too soon to think about it, ART is too new. 

Another example is my Home Theater clients at home. 2 of them are connected by WiFi, I'm too lazy to open my floors and lay a lot of Ethernet cables around. WiFi works just fine on Linux, but on FreeBSD the speed is too slow to play HD content because 802.11ac is still not supported. I know, there are not too many people working on FreeBSD WiFi stack and hardware companies do not offer their support either.

Yet another example is my old HP printer. It works on Linux because HP created a special driver for it. The driver is missing for FreeBSD. Am I supposed to go out and buy a new printer just to run FreeBSD and be able to print? Sorry, I have other things to do with my time and money.


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## kpedersen (Feb 21, 2020)

tankist02 said:


> Am I supposed to go out and buy a new printer just to run FreeBSD and be able to print? Sorry, I have other things to do with my time and money.



Well kind-of yes. People go out and buy a Macbook all the time just to run macOS.

Likewise you often need to go out and by a new printer for it to work on the latest Windows 10. I doubt my old Windows XP canoscan scanner has Win10 compatible drivers these days.

You are expected to buy compatible hardware for any OS you run.


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## gpw928 (Feb 21, 2020)

tankist02 said:


> Am I supposed to go out and buy a new printer just to run FreeBSD and be able to print? Sorry, I have other things to do with my time and money.


I agree.  For what ever the task is, choose the tool that's right for you.  I don't use FreeBSD for everything. Nor do I want to.


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## ralphbsz (Feb 22, 2020)

aragats said:


> _Silverlight_? Is it alive? I think it's dead for few years, nobody's using it.


There are (unfortunately?) still web sites I have to access that require it.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Feb 22, 2020)

aragats said:


> _TeamViewer_ perfectly works in emulators/wine (its Linux version *IS* using wine!). _Skype_ is barely working in general. 99.9% of my former _Skype_ contacts have switched to _WhatApp_. I'd like to have _Skype for Business_ working (since it's a de facto standard in the company I work for), but it doesn't exist even for Linux. And it's almost dead anyway ― MS is trying to push their "Teams" now. _Silverlight_? Is it alive? I think it's dead for few years, nobody's using it.



*TeamViewer*. According to this page it should exist and there is no reference to Wine. I use *AnyDesk* and push people to work with me to do the same. It works well in FreeBSD. The free version is unrestricted, unlike TeamViewer. 

*WhastApp*, this quite bad. I just changed to *Telegram*, which works exellent in FreeBSD and in my 3 other devices at the same time ! give it a shot. The only thing it lacks is video call, for the rest it is superior to WS from all points of view. Ah, BTW, it has an API you can code. I did it on a little script to send pictures from my phone to one of my computer directory, it is freaking awesome.

*Silverlight*. Unfortunately I tried to watch AT&T tv months ago and I can ensure that a crappy plugin was required. I had to use the Mac AFAIRemember. I changed house last summer so I can't check. I can't find this for Linux, so probably it needs Wine anyway so it was not a good example.

I can look for other programs but the fact exist. There is more sofware for Linux, from drivers to applications. Please don't deny this because it is obvious.

Then, if you need to run a specific sofware 90% of the time a VM is enough. For Mac stuff it may be a problem, e.g. *OmniGraffle*. I tried to run the Mac in a VM, I made it but the user experience was far from exciting. 

If you need some really special stuff. Eg. Big fat 3D CAD, or Apple dev stuff then run FreeBSD in a VM as I do, all the time. 

bye
n.


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## aragats (Feb 22, 2020)

Nicola Mingotti said:


> *TeamViewer*. According to this page it should exist and there is no reference to Wine.


It always existed. But you're right, the current version is a Linux ELF binary, they finally built it for Linux. I wonder why it depends on Qt5 libs. Windows version is linked statically.
However, they still have older versions, which are wine-based:

```
$ ll teamviewer/tv_bin/
total 38912
drwxr-xr-x  8 sm  wheel   512B  6 Oct  2016 .
drwxr-xr-x  6 sm  wheel   512B  6 Oct  2016 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 sm  wheel   512B  6 Oct  2016 desktop
drwxr-xr-x  2 sm  wheel   1.0K  6 Oct  2016 resources
drwxr-xr-x  4 sm  wheel   512B  6 Oct  2016 RTlib
drwxr-xr-x  2 sm  wheel   1.0K  6 Oct  2016 script
lrwxr-xr-x  1 sm  wheel    17B  6 Oct  2016 TeamViewer -> script/teamviewer
-rwxr-xr-x  1 sm  wheel   8.5M  6 Oct  2016 TeamViewer_Desktop
-rwxr-xr-x  1 sm  wheel   5.2M  6 Oct  2016 teamviewer-config
-rwxr-xr-x  1 sm  wheel    11M  6 Oct  2016 teamviewerd
-rwxr-xr-x  1 sm  wheel   3.4M  6 Oct  2016 TVGuiDelegate
-rwxr-xr-x  1 sm  wheel   4.7M  6 Oct  2016 TVGuiSlave.32
-rwxr-xr-x  1 sm  wheel   4.7M  6 Oct  2016 TVGuiSlave.64
drwxr-xr-x  6 sm  wheel   512B  6 Oct  2016 wine
drwxr-xr-x  2 sm  wheel   512B  6 Oct  2016 xdg-utils
```



Nicola Mingotti said:


> I use *AnyDesk* and push people to work with me to do the same. It works well in FreeBSD. The free version is unrestricted, unlike TeamViewer.


Yeah, AnyDesk is much better. Also, Teamviewer's license is too expensive, and the free version disconnects frequently.


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## Nicola Mingotti (Feb 22, 2020)

aragats said:


> I wonder why it depends on Qt5 libs. Windows version is linked statically.



Considering you show it was previously running with Wine it means they made the Linux native version recently. The choice of* Qt* seems a natural one, I don't program in C++, but I tried it in PySide2, in my opinion Qt is a pleasure to work with (at least in Python). Starting from its very good documentation. 

Why depends on libs? Umm... I don't know but it may have something to do with the *license*. It maight be that to compile a full static binary using Qt you need to pay. But I never studied the Qt license so I let others give a more informed view on this.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 22, 2020)

tankist02 When one runs a construction company, and drives a MAC truck for that, he doesn't bring the truck home when Mom wants to drive the kids to soccer practice. He buys a van instead.

Too many times the driving force for some people is home usage such as games and entertainment. That is the purview of Windows and the area Linux is most interested in. FreeBSD is more interested in technical competency, accuracy and stability for professionals at work. When you see carpenters at work, you see them using fundamental tools that have worked for centuries and decades and not pretty, blinking lights on hammers and saws.

I understand your point that it would be nice to be able to play games on lunch break at work but many technology companies that supply tools for the office and home chase the market and not the technology. That is, most users are on Windows and that's where the dollars are so they focus on that. Linux wants to compete with Windows so the have a lot of their people focus on packaging that software to work for them.

In the meantime, FreeBSD doesn't have spare kernel or networking programmers to work on games in their spare time--as if they had spare time. Occasionally one will read about some FreeBSD developers running FreeBSD on a Mac. The reason, I'm sure, is because it's a true UNIX that contains parts of BSD but let's them have access to "family friendly" software.

The problem with family friendly software is you wind up with...Linux. A thousand distros and no solution to the problems of KDE, Gnome, my desktop is better than yours, compatibility, stability, etc.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Feb 22, 2020)

I am very different than most people in the way I think. I don't like doing things the way the "masses" do and have been a rebel my entire life, not just in the IT realm. This is why once I got into IT and discovered open source operating systems, I dove in head first. Here was an entire population of folks who shunned what the masses were doing. I knew nothing about FreeBSD until a few years ago and although I have bounced back and forth between it and Linux during the past couple of years, I am back on FreeBSD as a desktop and am very happy with it.

My "difference" in IT means that I change the way I do things to accommodate the tools I wish to use. Maybe I am the guy that drives that MAC truck to the grocery store. If I can't play a specific game on FreeBSD, I have my PS4 to placate me, or I find another game that does work on FreeBSD. Gaming using "Steam" is the only thing I can't do on FreeBSD that Linux brings to the table, but I am not willing to move away from something so simple and rock steady just for that.


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## 20-100-2fe (Feb 22, 2020)

tankist02 said:


> But ART is not (yet?) available on FreeBSD.
> 
> It works on Linux because HP created a special driver for it. The driver is missing for FreeBSD.



I came to Linux 25 years ago because it was a great occasion for sharing, learning and contributing. But since Intel, IBM and Microsoft rule its destiny, it is no longer such and this made me actively look for an alternative, which I have found with FreeBSD.

I have a Brother laser printer that just got supported under Linux but not under FreeBSD. Because the driver is open source, I could create a port fort it. It was an occasion for me to learn, share and contribute. This is what I wanted, what makes me happy.

If you're not looking for that, but are just interested in being able to use your computer comfortably - which is perfectly legitimate - then you're right to select an OS that allows you to do it.

FreeBSD not addressing your needs doesn't make it a bad OS - good and bad don't exist for neither has a universal definition. As a famous German once said, everything is relative.


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## gpw928 (Feb 22, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Too many times the driving force for some people is home usage such as games and entertainment. That is the purview of Windows and the area Linux is most interested in.


I can't agree with the view that Linux is predominantly intended as a games and entertainment platform.

In the last decade, Linux has become the dominant "Unix" server variant in every IT department I have seen.  It has a major presence, often rivaled in numbers only by Windows servers.

Solaris is effectively gone.  AIX is being slowly and quietly deprecated.  They are mostly being augmented and replaced by Redhat Linux, with at least one eye firmly fixed the cloud.

Redhat customers are not "most interested" in Linux for "games and entertainment" in the home.  IBM bet $34 billion on that.


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## ralphbsz (Feb 23, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> ... is home usage such as games and entertainment. That is the purview of Windows and the area Linux is most interested in.


A: Windows is interested in many things. It doesn't actually make all that much money from games and entertainment. In terms of windows sales, I think the order is (1) servers, (2) professional desktop users, and (3) home users. Furthermore, today Microsoft is more of a cloud company, and somewhat of an application company (Office and related stuff), and only to a small extent an operating system company.

B: The statement "the area Linux is interested in" makes little sense. There are many Linuxes. There is the foundation, which is funded by a whole lot of entities, and employs Linus and a few other people, but does not have power over everything. Kernel development is done in many places, without central command and control. There are lots of distributions, the biggest ones being RedHat, SUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, and so on. Nobody knows what their market share is, and even more interestingly, comparing the market share among servers, desktops, and machines with paid support is meaningless. Each of those distributions has their own interest and goals.

One thing that is very clear is that the market share of Linux (and by extension all free Unixes) on the desktop/laptop market is tiny. That market is still dominated by Windows, with ChromeOS in second place, and MacOS in third, and all the rest are in the single-digit percent. So the question "what is Linux interest in the desktop market" is not only meaningless, it is also irrelevant.



> Occasionally one will read about some FreeBSD developers running FreeBSD on a Mac.


I know a few BSD developers, and my hunch would be that among them the most popular machines are Macs (running MacOS) and Chromebooks. That's because real development doesn't happen on one's desktop machine, but on remote machines, so the choice of what to use as a user-interface and what to code on becomes decoupled.


20-100-2fe said:


> I came to Linux 25 years ago because ... But since Intel, IBM and Microsoft rule its destiny, ...


The statement that Intel, IBM and Microsoft rule Linux' destiny is complete nonsense. Paranoid nonsense. It is true that Intel and IBM (as the new corporate home of RedHat have some influence, but many other companies and people also have influence. Microsoft has very little influence.



gpw928 said:


> In the last decade, Linux has become the dominant "Unix" server variant in every IT department I have seen.  It has a major presence, often rivaled in numbers only by Windows servers.


Exactly correct. Among the TOP500 supercomputers, Linux has 100% market share. Let me repeat that: There is no single supercomputer worth mentioning that runs an OS other than Linux. Among cloud machines (at the companies often referred to as FAANG, plus their Chinese counterparts), Linux servers absolutely dominate (with a little Windows here and there, and a small number of FreeBSD-derived machines at "N"). In IT departments, it is as you said: overwhelmingly Linux, a little Windows.



> Solaris is effectively gone.  AIX is being slowly and quietly deprecated.


While that is true, there is interestingly still a thriving market in older OSes. AIX is still sold and supported (it is the last major Unix still standing). You can still get HPUX on Itanium, but that will end in a few years. But non-Unix OSes are still shipping, and have commercial support contracts, including Nonstop (Tandem's old operating system), OpenVMS (the old Digital Equipment OS), MVS/TSO and VM (today in the guise of zOS on IBM mainframes), GCOS (formerly known as GECOS, the GE -> Honeywell -> Bull operating system, still enhanced and supported by Bull), IBM iSeries (formerly known as AS/400, which enhanced the series of System 34, 36 and 38 operating systems), and even HP's old MPE can still get support (I think only from third parties today). While all this is only in support of legacy applications, it is still a multi-billion $ industry. One could actually say that IBM made all the money for buying RedHat by selling mainframe computers, which use a 50-year old CPU architecture and run a 50-year old OS.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 23, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> Windows is interested in many things. It doesn't actually make all that much money from games and entertainment.


It's the area we are talking about in this thread.


ralphbsz said:


> The statement "the area Linux is interested in" makes little sense. There are many Linuxes.


Which is part of the problem I talked about. The multitude of Linux-i, or whatever you want to call it, focused on this are.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 23, 2020)

gpw928 said:


> I can't agree with the view that Linux is predominantly intended as a games and entertainment platform.


I didn't say that. I said Linux is focused on competing with Windows on the desktop where games and entertainment dominate. Go to any forum--or even this forum and this thread, I think--to see people say they need Linux to play their games. I'd venture to say that 80% of all Linux users on reddit wouldn't even own a computer if it weren't for games.


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## wolffnx (Feb 23, 2020)

shkhln said:


> Let's keep sluts, whores and bitches out of this debate



 it's true,they dont have the guilt


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## jiaxing (Feb 23, 2020)

I do use Linux to substitude Windows 7 as I don't want to move to Windows 10 and it hardware support is excellent.


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## justinnoor (Feb 23, 2020)

darkoverlordofdata said:


> I am struck by the attitude of the BSD developers which can be summarize as "it's a server, why are you trying to use it for your desktop?".



Absolutely amazing how often this question comes up. FreeBSD can be anything you want it to be - that’s the beauty of it. Philosophically it’s somewhat comparable to Arch Linux. It’s not just a server - it’s whatever you make it. If it’s missing something you want, make a contribution.


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## 6502 (Feb 26, 2020)

cynwulf said:


> Nvidia provide a functional FreeBSD driver - AMD and Intel do not.


What does this mean - AMD and Intel video is not supported under FreeBSD or it will run in generic mode without any acceleration?


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## sidetone (Feb 26, 2020)

6502 said:


> What does this mean - AMD and Intel video is not supported under FreeBSD or it will run in generic mode without any acceleration?


Nvidia is supported in a different way than Intel and AMD. Intel and AMD have opensource parts available, that allow FreeBSD and Linux to build on that driver. Nvidia provides the whole driver for its cards, but it's closed source. It depends on people's opinions, on which they consider better supported.


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## shkhln (Feb 26, 2020)

6502 said:


> What does this mean - AMD and Intel video is not supported under FreeBSD or it will run in generic mode without any acceleration?



Does this really need to be explained? AMD and Intel drivers are continuously being ported from Linux by FreeBSD developers, which is a lot of work with occasional spectacular breakages. Although the Nvidia's driver is Linux-first as well, at least the Nvidia's driver developers do the necessary porting work themselves and test the basic functionality with FreeBSD. The resulting driver is much more stable and always up to date.


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## shkhln (Feb 26, 2020)

Oh, before anybody accuses me of being biased… The main issue with Nvidia is that they tend to act in a unilateral way. Whether they decide that a particular feature is only useful on Linux or to drop support for something, they aren't interested in feedback and they usually won't even bother to announce the decision. They also have a similarly opaque bug submission process, which certainly doesn't help.


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## GlitchyDot (Apr 1, 2020)

Interesting...
But to understand more you need to understand what is a desktop and what you can do ...
I don't think that the future is dull for FreeBSD on desktops ... let's take an example of my work ... I'm working remotely, I need internet, phone, and computer to run pdf, skype, web browser and software to count miles ( dispatcher here ) ... so... PDF? ( opens up in web browser ) , Skype - works on Linux, software for mile counting? found few alternatives   PC Miler web or truck router or Truckstop ( dedicated dispatching thing ), need to work with PDF editing ( sign it for example - there are web sites free of charge to do so ) ... so what's stopping me to have FreeBSD on my desktop? Only skype ... so in my case, I can have FreeBSD desktop with minor issue - skype. as the rest of it - works fine. What I do when I'm not working ...? I read forums, play with HTML and CSS and try to customize my PC`s the way I like...watch movies, listen to music.
Conclusion - as many people use PC just for browsing, watching movies, occasional word usage ( Ms office or Open Office, etc, etc )  and gaming - I don't think there is a reason not to use FreeBSD... when I want to play games - I restart my PC to W10 and that's about it... and a lot of Linux users dual boot with W10 as well as there is no way to play AAA games on Linux.
P.s. as there is something in freshports for skype ( if I understood its a web thing ... as you can run skype from the web on windows and Linux as well .. have not tried yet.  
Hardware? I'm running FreeBSD on ThinkPad P71 which is about 2-3years old .... so not that old...gonna try to use on my desktop ( dual E5 Xeon ) but I'm 110% sure it will be fine... nVidia? well, this is something awkward in Linux as well ...
But but but .... but what's the reason to switch from Linux to FreeBSD or from W10 to FreeBSD? - my case ? might be a mascot ( I know, I know ... but I put fashion and rarety first  ) and just try something else instead of Arch Linux .... ( You might say other Linux flavors? they are sort of the same thing - so I don't see reasons to switch from Pacman to something like apt or whatever they have there ... sorry, my first and last Linux distro - Arch so I don't know anything about other package managers. and Gentoo? a bit too hard to understand how to install it ... I still have not tried to read about Slackware ) other things? Language barrier ... and it makes things complicated. I noted FreeBSD only has few languages ... as I'm used to Arch Linux Wiki I can compare only to them - multilanguage support in their wiki is great so if FreeBSD would have language support in their wiki - I think base could get a bit bigger and more people would contribute to it as its easier to go to FreeBSD instead of googling many pages on the web ( I'm not talking about Google as page 2 counts as dark web for the majority and they are scared of it  )

Mmy 2 euro cents.


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## shkhln (Apr 1, 2020)

Now, now. Let's not abandon basic structure and punctuation.


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## DusTech (Apr 7, 2020)

Hi everyone,


I'm interested in this topic too.

I tried FreeBSD years ago on a bare metal laptop, but was defeated by the extreme difficulty I found to make the desktop environment work.

Now I've just bought a new High End laptop (it must be shipped to me by days) and I'm eager to leave windows and go for FreeBSD for... reasons. I love how it claim to be a UNIX OS and not a Kernel with some plugin. But...
I'm comparing BSD and Linux distros on virtualbox and for as much I try I'm finding Linux (CentOS, Ubuntu, the new  UbtuntuDDE, etc) more user friendly to desktop users. Expecially CentOS that I think is more server focused feel more Desktop oriented than FreeBSD.
I'm a professional programmer and I work on .NET, I'm thinking to virtualize Windows 10 to work (I need it for my job) but for everything else I'm planning to use something else.
Now the question is: there is any chance that FreeBSD will operate better on bare metal than virtualized in VM?
For example Opera crashes, Plasma 5 keep to go full transparent and I need to reboot, Chromium need a fix in the memory config to be able to not hang on tabs etc... there are many little problems that summed up keep the system to be unusable from a desktop user perspective.
I'm don't want to give up, but CentOS seems more appealing by now.

What do you think?

Thank you all


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## Hakaba (Apr 8, 2020)

For me, there is two points and one suggestion.
First :


DusTech said:


> I've just bought a new High End laptop


Linux will be better to handle this hardware. I have a one year old laptop and bluetooth, wifi, graphic card etc only work after picking patch. I know FreeBSD 13 (maybe 12.2) will work out of the box, but you are not living in the future.

Second : This laptop is your working computer. Do not spare time on it with Linux or FreeBSD as the hardware is certified for Windows. If a linux (or BSD) thing require two day to found a solution or to be well configured, do not lose this time on your job.

Suggest :
Dual boot Windows and freeBSD. Use the necessary time to learn, test, configure and virtualize with freebsd.
And when you will be confirtable with FreeBSD as a main OS, switch to it as your main OS with a virtualized Windows.

Be aware that Linux distrubution and FreeBSD do not share the same philosophy. So triple boot is not a good idea ( unless learning is a passion).
Personnaly, I never use Windows, but mac OS (classic), linux (multi flavor), mac OS X and freebsd.
I use FreeBSD now. All (ok, not all...) I learn with an OS was useless for others.


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## DusTech (Apr 8, 2020)

Hakaba said:


> For me, there is two points and one suggestion.
> First :
> 
> Linux will be better to handle this hardware. I have a one year old laptop and bluetooth, wifi, graphic card etc only work after picking patch. I know FreeBSD 13 (maybe 12.2) will work out of the box, but you are not living in the future.
> ...



Thank you for you suggestions.

So you are telling me that there is no way I'll get my brand new machine to run FreeBSD without loose my time to hardware/software probles fixes before becaming productive.

I'm afraid that if I'll dual boot with windows I'll return with using it all the time because it's my comfort zone. 
That's way years ago I just gave up, the first step to enter FreeBSD world is too steep.
I'm experimenting with some FreeBSD instances servers on Azure, but it's not the same thing than use it in the everyday jobs.


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## kpedersen (Apr 8, 2020)

DusTech said:


> So you are telling me that there is no way I'll get my brand new machine to run FreeBSD



Did you buy the machine with FreeBSD in mind? If so I am assuming that you have checked all the components are compatible with FreeBSD. If so, yes it should work fine.

From my personal experience, I tend to believe that all heavy desktop environments (Gnome 3, KDE 4+) are pretty much broken in little annoying ways regardless of which free operating system you use so you might as well stick with FreeBSD.

However you mentioned that you were a .NET developer. This is kinda like saying that you are a Swift/Cocoa developer. Sure there are projects to make it run on other operating systems but you will encounter less issues professionally using the Windows platform it was intended for. Windows VM in VirtualBox may get round that but it might not provide you with the most optimal experience if you spend a lot of time with it. I notice Mono and dotnetcore currently seem to be the minority compared to full fat .NET Framework

Give it a shot; stick with it for a few weeks and see how you get on. If the "correctness" of FreeBSD outweighs the convenience of Windows, then it wins


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## DusTech (Apr 8, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> Did you buy the machine with FreeBSD in mind? If so I am assuming that you have checked all the components are compatible with FreeBSD. If so, yes it should work fine.
> 
> From my personal experience, I tend to believe that all heavy desktop environments (Gnome 3, KDE 4+) are pretty much broken in little annoying ways regardless of which free operating system you use so you might as well stick with FreeBSD.
> 
> ...



No, I'm sorry I just looked wich hardware was the best from the vendor, so I'm guilty on that.

I feel you are just right when you say that desktop envinroments are all a little broken, but I didn't find alternatives.

I'll give it a try as you say... maybe it's the right time.


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## mickey (Apr 8, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> From my personal experience, I tend to believe that all heavy desktop environments (Gnome 3, KDE 4+) are pretty much broken in little annoying ways regardless of which free operating system you use so you might as well stick with FreeBSD.


I'd say the same holds true in regards to Windows 10 no less. I have my desktop dual boot Windows 10 and FreeBSD/KDE and find myself using FreeBSD more and more these days cause KDE delivers a desktop experience that is much more pleasing in so many ways that it's hard to express. Not to mention the good feeling that _it_ is not constantly trying to do things behind my back that I do not wish or approve of, and that configuration changes I make do not magically return to whatever MS had in mind for those.


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## drhowarddrfine (Apr 8, 2020)

DusTech said:


> CentOS seems more appealing by now.


From what I read, centOS won't be any different as far as desktop is concerned. If anything, it will be farther behind.

As suggested by others, you need to make the hardware fit the software and quit all this guesswork.


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## scottro (Apr 8, 2020)

Note that CentOS-8 still has a lot of missing packages, especially for desktop. When I installed it, I had to rebuild several rpms (either from Fedora or older CentOS) and still haven't gotten weechat (a text based irc client that works with slack, which my company uses), working. Depending upon your needs, essential packages, and so on, you might want CentOS-7 or even Fedora, which unlike CentOS, has a smooth upgrade path. 
However, having one machine with CentOS and another with FreeBSD, there's still a few things CentOS does without effort that FreeBSD doesn't, such as viewing Netflix. Hrrm, that's the only thing I can think of right now. Linux tends to have better support for wireless cards,especially 802.11ac and later.  I haven't gotten my laptops's (two of 'em) Intel 7260 wireless to go full speed on FreeBSD. (though I haven't tried in several months, so I've not kept up with it.)


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## Hakaba (Apr 8, 2020)

DusTech said:


> So you are telling me that there is no way I'll get my brand new machine to run FreeBSD without loose my time to hardware/software probles fixes before becaming productive.


It is only my feeling, but un short, yes.
Not because it is hard to have a working env (in fact, my laptop with intel graphic and ethernet is ok to work. Wifi/bluetooth/optimus support are not necessary).
But if you often come in this forum, read some news on FreeBSD (same for linux), you will feel the tast to test improbable things.
And that is not compatible with a workstation (stable, only update if needed and so on).
Yes, my hardware have issue with FreeBSD (and linux). But it is not my working laptop.
Some exemples :
- I read an how to run firefox in jails. I really love the idea. Lost 1 day to have something working...
- use jails in my servers. On my laptop, I have experimented ezjail, iocage, bastille... Spend time to do the same thing, but I learn a lot...
- why not experiment poudriere ?
- XFCE is not that sexy. I migrate to dwm, like it and now I am writting C code to extend it... (and relearn C).

Very FEW sample in only one year.
That is not really true with flavored Linux. I use Xubuntu and I see the same philosophy as Windows :
- «automagic» update
- breaking good feature to introduce «modernity»
- follow the movement, experimentation is risky and not supported.
- deep documentation is not really accessible
- installation of tons of unwanted libs/soft/ config tools.
...

I always see the FreeBSD laptop experiment as a fun way to learn and experiment things (for me)

Ok, I use git/vscode/firefox/ssh/... on this laptop for my personal project and it not impossible.
But if I broke something, I do not lose one working day (not the same computer for my client)


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 8, 2020)

I re-read the title of this thread and came to the conclusion it really doesn't matter. If FreeBSD works as a desktop for you, then great. If not, then use whatever works for you. I use FreeBSD as a desktop because I am an OS "rebel" (will always go against what everyone else does) and because my use cases allow me to. I have a separate work laptop with windows on it I have to use for work, but for personal use, I can use whatever I want, so my homebuilt PC runs FreeBSD. Might be different if I only had a laptop, mainly because laptops are typically built from random, proprietary components that are not always compatible with open source operating systems. Obviously people here run laptops so folks do have success with them.

If I couldn't run FreeBSD for whatever reason, I would run a non-systemd Linux distro if possible (Gentoo or CRUX), or even OpenBSD but that experiment did not go well last time I tried...


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## wolffnx (Apr 8, 2020)

DusTech said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> 
> I'm interested in this topic too.
> ...



Hi DusTech



> there is any chance that FreeBSD will operate better on bare metal than virtualized in VM?



for me, always best in bare metal , any operating system



> new High End laptop



I read that some users have problems with new hardware, but there is a list of compatible laptops
Laptop support, you don't check..bad bad  , lucky for you



> I'm thinking to virtualize Windows 10 to work (I need it for my job) but for everything else I'm planning to use something else.



If you need only the software in Windows, go for it , in FreeBSD are multiple solutions to virtualize some use bhyve. That is the most simple and clean for use (in a plain text file of 10-15 lines you have a full virtual machine) and you have bhyve passthrough. The old VirtualBox, some people says that is a dirty hack, but it works well.

And many more, for me I use emulators/virtualbox-ose-nox11 for Windows7, because bhyve is too slow for me(in RDP session and virtualized ethernet nic is like been behind a 56kbps modem), I think is because of graphics support of bhyve, is too green for now (I don't want 3D acceleration but of course 2D, especially in Windows) and Virtualbox do the job very well, good for everyday use (I don't care about USB passthrough)



> there are many little problems that summed up keep the system to be unusable from a desktop user perspective



That's the magic of all, it's true, there are problems that won't have solution(for now). But the majority have solutions and fixes. And here you have a very good documentation and most of all an excellent community and forums.


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## DusTech (Apr 8, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> Hi DusTech
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thank you all... I'm not giving up for now... I'm experimenting in VMs.... now in VMWare workstation pro 15, and it is featuring the same problems (some worst) than in VirtualBox.
Now I can't see the lower part of the screen, can't change teh resolution (in Virtualbox I could), and plasma went full transparent again.
I'm aware that I can change desktop env but I like the plasma look, I can't say the same for gnome and xfce is fine but not spectacular.
What I don't understand is why using the binaries in the pkg everything is not working out of the box. I'm not experimenting something strange... I've installed:
- nano
- xorg
- plasma
and I feel the system is corrupted because is not responding well like, say, fedora or ubuntu or some other silly distro.

I can't stand linux and its caotic ecosystem, but I must admit that is more user friendly.

Maybe I'll give XFCE another spin.


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## meine (Apr 8, 2020)

For sure FreeBSD has a future on a desktop or laptop!

Out of the box most things work, some parts you have to do some homework to make it work, but that is part of the fun. It isn't half as complicated and it is getting better every time.

The other side is: what do you want? Do you want a MacOS but are afraid to buy one? Then you have to do some research and make it, the components are there. 

Or do you want a workhorse without the s-load of CPU-consuming frills? Then just do a basic install and use the tool. You don't need all those bells and whistles for writing texts or code, they are mere distraction.


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## 20-100-2fe (Apr 8, 2020)

I mostly agree with hakaba and kpedersen. For .Net development, you should stick to Windows, it's your job, no kidding.

A possibility for you is to keep your new laptop for work and use the old one to experiment with FreeBSD. On real hardware, you'll come across different issues, but you'll be able to get a good feeling of the "real" thing. There are limits to what you can evaluate using a VM.

Then, you'll be able to make a decision as to which OS you want to use on your personal laptop.

I would also advise you to avoid dual boot as it is a frequent cause of questions on forums. 

You can get a small SSD for ~ $50 and an adapter cable to plug it in a USB port. Burn an USB key with FreeBSD's installer, plug it in your laptop along with the SSD, boot the installer and install FreeBSD on the SSD. At the end of the installation procedure, accept the opportunity to open a shell to make modifications and add the following line to /boot/loader.conf: vfs.mountroot.timeout="10"

Then, when your laptop reboots, enter the boot menu again and select your SSD to boot FreeBSD. You're done.

I've tested FreeBSD and OpenBSD on such a configuration, it allows you to test the OS on real hardware without touching your internal hard disk, just at the cost of reduced performance due to using your external SSD via USB.

I've also tried to do the same with Linux, but GRUB doesn't like this configuration at all and I had to reinstall my machine. :/

If you liked XFCE, you'll probably like MATE even more. It shares a sense of simplicity with XFCE, but is more consistent and featureful, and much easier to customize for mass installations and/or (in my case) professional use.


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## gpw928 (Apr 8, 2020)

If your CPU and motherboard support VT-x, and VT-d (and consider AES-ni), then fast virtualisation is possible.

Otherwise, if you need speed, the operating system might need to be native.

There's plenty of good advice above, for all cases.

I run FreeBSD native; under VirtualBox on Windows (notebook); and under KVM on Linux (virtualisation server) -- where the native platform was chosen for appropriate performance and functionality.


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## rootbert (Apr 9, 2020)

FYI: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually-linux-distro-review-freebsd-12-1-release/

While I use FreeBSD on my desktop, notebook and servers I do have to admit that there are quite some issues. I do understand why people give up on FreeBSD on the desktop and move to Linux - most of the stuff works out of the box in Linux land.


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## kpedersen (Apr 9, 2020)

rootbert said:


> FYI: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually-linux-distro-review-freebsd-12-1-release/



Quite a good review. In general the author knows quite a bit (which is nice and less biased). Some things were a little incorrect though.

"Frustratingly, like every other bit of documentation so far, it doesn't say a peep about xorg—and installing gdm didn't bring xorg in as a dependency."

Well... no. Xorg isn't a dependency of gdm. Take the "consumer desktop" hat off for a bit and think about Xvnc or XDMCP queries to gdm allowing remote logins. You don't necessarily want to run gdm on Xorg just to serve remote access. Your server might not even have a capable GPU.

Also, a few things came out that suggests he hadn't read the FreeBSD handbook. For example there are clear instructions there for installing Xorg via the meta package.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 9, 2020)

For me, the only thing that works in Linux that does not (easily) in FreeBSD is the Steam gaming platform. Other than that, sure, Linux is "easier", but FreeBSD is so simple to configure for my use case that I prefer it. I don't use a desktop environment, only a window manager. Oddly enough on Linux, I have always used a desktop environment, typically Mate`. I know desktop environments work in FreeBSD but to me, they go against the simplicity of FreeBSD somehow. That makes no sense but it's how I feel. 

The only functionality that does not work out of the box on FreeBSD for me is thumbdrive mounting but Vermaden's sysutils/automount works perfectly for this and is very easy to set up.

I really like the fact FreeBSD keeps user installed software "virtually" separated from the base OS, instead of lumping/mixing it all together like Linux does. I can easily experiment with using ports or packages and go from one to the other without breaking the base OS. That is something Linux users trying FreeBSD don't initially get, and their first instinct is to reinstall the OS if they somehow break a piece of user installed software.


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## rootbert (Apr 9, 2020)

one of the most annoying things for me, and thats where the author is absolutely right, is the speed of the package management, at least here in central europe ( I can only speak for Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Czech Republic). No matter at what time, installing software feels like in the past millenium. Just installed firefox on a machine with gigabit internet - downloading all packages with 165 megabytes needs 645 seconds.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 9, 2020)

Agree - download speed even with the geoip chosen repository servers is dismal. I have no numbers but it is noticeably slower. I have far less bandwidth than you, mainly because the US lags far behind in provided Internet speeds than other countries. That is the fault of the companies providing our Internet connections so probably not much will change that...


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## rootbert (Apr 9, 2020)

lets just hope this speaks for an increasing userbase ;-)


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 9, 2020)

I do understand they may not have the funding for fast connections or servers. Open source projects live and die by donations or people that can afford to support the project. I have donated a couple of times to the foundation because I like FreeBSD and want to keep using it. I don't care if it doesn't move forward at the speed of light like the progress does on some Linux distros - I rather prefer a slower pace and stability. As long as security issues are fixed of course


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## kpedersen (Apr 9, 2020)

Sevendogsbsd said:


> Oddly enough on Linux, I have always used a desktop environment, typically Mate`.



I wonder if this is due to the trend of Linux moving to reliance on big DEs. The whole role of systemd is to be automated from GUI tools rather than use directly from the command line. Same with ip compared to ifconfig etc.
I would even go so far as to say systemd (and surrounding utilities) is very flexible... but it just isn't powerful.

Possibly the best example is wpa_supplicant. Its default systemd unit doesn't even listen on a unix socket for wpa_cli. It instead connects to dbus to be fiddled around with via the GDM. That is not a sane choice if Linux ever wants to pretend that it has a good focus on servers or command line.

Not all Linux is like that I suppose. Some are still trying to remain well designed. Anything with a text based installer can probably be trusted. alpine, arch, void, etc.

I have no preference between Windows and Linux these days. I cannot believe that happened. I actively avoid investing any time in learning any new Linux "feature". I honestly feel that any time spent is a waste of time. I might just be fatigued


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 9, 2020)

Arch is typically the distro I use if on Linux. Text install, lean and fast. I also steer clear of anything related to Gnome. The desktop experience on Arch is good for the most part; I have never had an issue running it. I just miss FreeBSD when on Linux so end up switching back, mainly because systemd seems to be moving so rapidly, I always feel “unsettled” on Linux, like I am standing on a flying carpet...


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## wolffnx (Apr 9, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> Possibly the best example is wpa_supplicant. Its default systemd unit doesn't even listen on a unix socket for wpa_cli. It instead connects to dbus to be fiddled around with via the GDM.



What?? I'leave Linux sooo far ago but this is insanity .. R.I.P little penguin
or at least enjoy your last years


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## Alain De Vos (Apr 9, 2020)

I find networkmanager also a problematic package.


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## 20-100-2fe (Apr 9, 2020)

Alain De Vos said:


> I find networkmanager also a problematic package.


Why?


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 9, 2020)

I don't have any problems with any Linux packages, but I am also not a developer so don't know what is happening behind the scenes. I know systemd has managed to worm its way into nearly every facet of Linux which I find odd but I don't want this thread to devolve into a systemd bashing thread. I also don't understand behind the scenes everything systemd does.


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## 20-100-2fe (Apr 9, 2020)

The only thing I find really annoying with FreeBSD is not desktop-related, it's the way packages are built. While a package is being built, the previous version becomes unavailable.

This means that when you install FreeBSD, you never know if you'll be able to complete the installation. You may have to wait 2-3 days until the new version becomes available.

It also means every time you update your packages, you must be very cautious to avoid having your whole desktop environment uninstalled due to a rebuild in progress.

Very annoying, indeed. It is even worse with NetBSD, though, but particularly well managed with Void Linux - yet a rolling release.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 9, 2020)

Do you mean if a package fails to build on the main FreeBSD repository that it will flag as unavailable and an update pulls it? That is annoying. Not enough for me to move away but does make me want to try and use ports, again... I have never had success at that though. I can use ports for a few days then something stupid happens and I start having failed builds that I have to troubleshoot. Reminds me of my Gentoo days years ago...


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## 20-100-2fe (Apr 9, 2020)

I don't know what it does behind the scene, but when you run pkg update, the package being rebuilt will be deleted from your system. You'd better run this command in a terminal window so you can scroll up and read everything carefully before confirming the update... 

This is something people trying FreeBSD regularly come across, as can be seen on this forum. If the current version of the package was kept until the build of the new one completes, such problems would not happen.



Sevendogsbsd said:


> Do you mean if a package fails to build on the main FreeBSD repository that it will flag as unavailable and an update pulls it? That is annoying. Not enough for me to move away but does make me want to try and use ports, again... I have never had success at that though. I can use ports for a few days then something stupid happens and I start having failed builds that I have to troubleshoot. Reminds me of my Gentoo days years ago...


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## lasuit (Apr 9, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> I don't know what it does behind the scene, but when you run pkg update, the package being rebuilt will be deleted from your system. You'd better run this command in a terminal window so you can scroll up and read everything carefully before confirming the update...
> 
> This is something people trying FreeBSD regularly come across, as can be seen on this forum. If the current version of the package was kept until the build of the new one completes, such problems would not happen.



I don't think you are correct.  I've often build a new package while running the old package.  FreeBSD won't delete the old package until after the new one is build.  If the compile fails, the old package remains.


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## shkhln (Apr 9, 2020)

Sevendogsbsd said:


> For me, the only thing that works in Linux that does not (easily) in FreeBSD is the Steam gaming platform.



I thought this has been addressed. Do you have a different opinion on the matter?


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## shkhln (Apr 9, 2020)

rootbert said:


> lets just hope this speaks for an increasing userbase ;-)



This speaks about decreased number of mirrors. There used to be pkg0.ydx.freebsd.org.


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## kpedersen (Apr 9, 2020)

Sevendogsbsd said:


> I can use ports for a few days then something stupid happens and I start having failed builds that I have to troubleshoot. Reminds me of my Gentoo days years ago...



OpenBSD does a bit better here. By default rather than recursing into a port dependency and building it will download and install a package instead.

So on FreeBSD I tend to do the same. For example if I was going to build dia, I would do `$ make all-depends-list` and just use pkg to fetch them.

I didn't run into too much breakage, compiling code needlessly just felt a bit wasteful to me. Also ultimately *every* port needs to have a clean Jail created for it to build in a completely deterministic manner and I could not justify that pressure on my hardware


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 9, 2020)

lasuit said:


> I don't think you are correct.  I've often build a new package while running the old package.  FreeBSD won't delete the old package until after the new one is build.  If the compile fails, the old package remains.



I am talking about the official repos, not personal repos. If a package fails to build in the official repos and you do a `pkg update`, it will pull the file that is no longer in the repos because it didn't build.


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 9, 2020)

shkhln said:


> I thought this has been addressed. Do you have a different opinion on the matter?


In all fairness, I need to try your linuxulator (?) solution, I have not yet so I should not say it doesn't work.


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## Alain De Vos (Apr 9, 2020)

When you can run void-linux or devuan in a linuxulator jail it is OK. But a lot of times it is broken.


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## Argentum (Apr 10, 2020)

I have been using FreeBSD on desktop since 2008, on servers since 1995. Never faced any serious hardware compatibility problems, however this has been a question of philosophy for me - which is primary, the software or the hardware. Naturally wantint to run FreeBSD I am selecting proper hardware, not just hoping to run it on any random crap.

Back in 2008 I ran into compatibility issue with Nvidia Quadro. Nvidia just did not release the hardware specs these days and there was only Linux driver available. But you can run Linux drivers on FreeBSD (not vice versa). So I got the Linux drivers working on my desktop. Today I am just trying to avoid any hardware with closed specs.

Today I have a desktop machine with several WM-s installed at the same time - Xfce, Mate, Gnome 3, KDE and OpenBox. For login I am using SDDM. Depending on mood, I can select the wondow manager I like. I like some applications on different WM packages, for example Gnome System Monitor, KDE Konsole, etc. Also have Crhomium, Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice, Freeplane and others.

Best regards!


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## SirDice (Apr 10, 2020)

Argentum said:


> Nvidia just did not release the hardware specs these days


NVidia never did.



> and there was only Linux driver available.


There have been Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD drivers available for as long as I can remember. At least since I started with FreeBSD around the 3.0 era.



> But you can run Linux drivers on FreeBSD (not vice versa).


No, you can't.



> So I got the Linux drivers working on my desktop.


I highly doubt that. 

I suspect you're confused about the Linux compatibility on the NVidia driver, most people seem to misunderstand this. That compatibility is there so you can use the driver with the Linux compatibility layer. It is not required for the driver to work.


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## zirias@ (Apr 10, 2020)

Seriously, I don't see the point of the question. A "future"? FreeBSD can be used on desktops, and as FreeBSD is a general purpose OS, this usecase is supported by porting (and, if necessary for correct operation on FreeBSD, patching) a lot of desktop-related software.

There seems to be a misunderstanding as well: Some people expect some automated installs and configurations for a fully working desktop. FreeBSD doesn't provide such a thing (and doesn't provide it for servers either), as the philosophy is to deliver third-party software as little modified as possible. So, FreeBSD isn't a "good choice" for someone expecting a desktop installation to work "out of the box". But it isn't rocket science either to install a fully working FreeBSD desktop -- you don't have to compile anything, everything you need can be installed from packages, all you need to do is a little manual configuration here or there.

Therefore, if by "future", you think of that out-of-the-box "experience", that will probably never happen. That doesn't mean desktop usage isn't supported, it is and I assume this won't change either.


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## getopt (Apr 10, 2020)

Zirias said:


> Therefore, if by "future", you think of that out-of-the-box "experience", that will probably never happen.


I'd say the "future" of FreeBSD is way brighter without any out-of the-box-desktop. We are a nice niche and it's worth to stay with this.

As having been said by others: One can use a desktop with FreeBSD. It's a relative low hurdle but a very very useful one. That's like a little FreeBSD-exam one has to take.


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## rootbert (Apr 10, 2020)

I would like to have more users ... I don't care if I use niche software or mainstream software as long as I am satisfied with the product per se. For some solutions I use linux, but native FreeBSD would of course be nice ... eg. helping out via teamviewer (well, I hate that piece of crap! but I'd like to have it in a jail to help my family members), or various video conferencing software.


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## fernandel (Apr 10, 2020)

It will be interesting to know what is the average age of the FreeBSD users (also other BSDs).

64


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 10, 2020)

Difficult statistically unless every user weighs in but I'll. start: 56


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## 20-100-2fe (Apr 10, 2020)

rootbert said:


> I would like to have more users ...



I understand this, but success comes at a price, illustrated by the evolution of Linux.
Considering that price, I'm not sure success is a good thing... :/


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## Alain De Vos (Apr 10, 2020)

Running sndiod on freebsd thanks to openbsd ?


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## Alain De Vos (Apr 10, 2020)

How would one compare freebsd to void-linux or devuan ?


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## Sevendogsbsd (Apr 10, 2020)

Windows is not “ease of use” in terms of UX - everything works with it but the UX is terrible for too many reasons to list. The UX on MacOS and Linux is IMHO light years ahead of the UX on Windows.

Flash should have died 10 years ago; no clue why Adobe keeps it alive. It is a security nightmare.

At least on FreeBSD we can make our own UX.


----------



## zirias@ (Apr 10, 2020)

pyret said:


> Flash


I'm sorry, did you miss a decade or something like that?


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## kpedersen (Apr 10, 2020)

Luckily flash is no longer a thing. It is a remnant of the dark times!

I don't think FreeBSD's desktop needs to get better. We just need to wait for everything else to get worse haha. Windows is going to disappear into the subscription cloud and Linux / Wayland is doomed to failure by falling apart into tiny niche fragments.

The year of the FreeBSD desktop will come and we don't need to write a single line of code XD.


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## ralphbsz (Apr 10, 2020)

rootbert said:


> I would like to have more users ...


Why? What would more users accomplish?

I think it would just accomplish more trouble. More people asking questions, needing help, being unsatisfied. Users don't contribute to a project, they use the resources of the project. Remember, FreeBSD doesn't make more money from more users (unlike Windows, Mac, and to some extent Linux, where many users pay for support contracts to companies like RedHat and SUSE). That cash flow is what keeps the developers, managers, and support people employed.

In the case of FreeBSD, a very small fraction of users are volunteer developers. But I think adding desktop users is unlikely to significantly increate the number of volunteer developers. And the funding for the foundation (which in turn pays some developers, sadly not many) doesn't come from desktop users, it comes from a very small number of large server user companies (such as Netflix).

I would like to have more developers. Not hackers, not programmers, software developers.


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## xtremae (Apr 10, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> Why? What would more users accomplish?


This will remain a mystery until a statistically significant number of people who use MacOS and Windows move to FreeBSD.



ralphbsz said:


> I would like to have more developers. Not hackers, not programmers, software developers.


But if you don't have enough users to create demand, you cannot entice companies to write device drivers and 3rd party applications that developers require. In turn, this means you have to depend on hackers to do the thankless job of porting drivers and software from Linux.


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## shkhln (Apr 10, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> Why? What would more users accomplish?



Somebody must nag upstream application developers to support FreeBSD. That requires numbers.



ralphbsz said:


> I would like to have more developers.



Aren't you contradicting yourself? Why would anyone develop anything for a platform with no users? Well, other than in-house enterprise applications, I mean.


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## wolffnx (Apr 10, 2020)

fernandel said:


> It will be interesting to know what is the average age of the FreeBSD users (also other BSDs).
> 
> 64



39 (start using FreeBSD 4 years ago)


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## fernandel (Apr 11, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> 39 (start using FreeBSD 4 years ago)


Thank you. Now is age average 53 years.
Why I ask about ages? 
Talking is about future of FreeBSD Desktop. And if are user old and average is for example 60 years is easier to predict the future


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## zirias@ (Apr 11, 2020)

shkhln said:


> Somebody must nag upstream application developers to support FreeBSD.



I actually did that for a certain C64 emulator. Of course, by creating an initial pull request on github, but well, it worked 

As for "more developers" -- I think a lot of the FreeBSD users already do _some_ programming. I personally didn't dive into FreeBSD base code, but I do maintain a few ports. I think anyone with a little programming background can learn that, the porters' handbook gives pretty good guidance, and I recommend setting up poudriere and using `poudriere testport` to check results. Desktops are all about applications, so work on ports is an important piece here  People, adopt ports, or create new ones


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## wolffnx (Apr 11, 2020)

fernandel said:


> Thank you. Now is age average 53 years.
> Why I ask about ages?
> Talking is about future of FreeBSD Desktop. *And if are user old and average is for example 60 years is easier to predict the future *



Exactly, and the experience always wins


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## ralphbsz (Apr 11, 2020)

shkhln said:


> Somebody must nag upstream application developers to support FreeBSD. That requires numbers.


I don't think most software developers respond to nagging. Either they have a paycheck, and respond to the needs of the organization that puts the numbers on their paycheck. Or they are hobbyists, and respond to their desires.



> Aren't you contradicting yourself? Why would anyone develop anything for a platform with no users? Well, other than in-house enterprise applications, I mean.


But it does have lots of users. Admittedly a lot less than Linux, about 100 times less in rough numbers. But the vast majority of all FreeBSD users are using it in server mode. And as I said above, developers either get paid (in which case they are probably working on server use cases, because that's where the money is), or they are volunteers (in which case they're going to work on what they find interesting). I haven't seen many developers (either commercial or open source) who do coding as a form of community service, to help unknown users.


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## zirias@ (Apr 11, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> I haven't seen many developers (either commercial or open source) who do coding as a form of community service, to help unknown users.


No "volunteer" will do that of course, if you develop in your spare time, you always develop stuff you want to use yourself. Still there are "volunteers" like me who value portable software -- so if someone approaches me telling me my software doesn't work correctly on system X, and said system is POSIX or at least close to, I do have an interest to fix that


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## 20-100-2fe (Apr 11, 2020)

Zirias said:


> Desktops are all about applications, so work on ports is an important piece here



Yes, but to be able to run applications, desktops must have good support for the hardware they run on. And this is the most painful issue, and where more developers would be the most helpful.

However, it is also in the area requiring the more advanced knowledge. A developer willing to write a device driver for a graphics card or whatever needs a deep knowledge in digital electronics. Nowadays processors are far more complex than a Z80 or 6502, there's a whole lot more to learn to be able to write working software.

Learning that kind of things not only takes time, but a beginner doesn't even know what he/she needs to learn, so the learning path is long and chaotic.

What might help volunteers willing to contribute to such developments is to be coached by more experienced developers, to put road signs along their learning path and ensure the consistency and comprehensiveness of the journey.


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## 20-100-2fe (Apr 11, 2020)

pyret said:


> If you already know Adobe Photoshop, which isn't available on FreeBSD



Anyway, professional Photoshop users would *never* want to use anything else than a Mac. Some of them might use a Windows or Linux machine for other purposes, but they know so many shortcuts and tricks on Mac that make their work so much easier that they feel totaly desperate when they have to use a Windows version of Photoshop, where all these things also exist, but in a slightly different way.

Besides, you seem to consider all users have the same expectations as yourself, which is a bit excessive.

For instance, I've been using Linux on my desktop and laptop computers since 2004.
I'm now giving FreeBSD a try and find it almost equivalent.
I've also been using Linux on my laptop at work for 2 years now.
I've never missed Windows - All the opposite!


----------



## wolffnx (Apr 11, 2020)

pyret said:


> FreeBSD desktop has no future.  Period.  Linux is better, but it still isn't a replacement for Windows and Mac.



Use Windows and done..from where are you posting this? in FreeBSD using links?  support Linux if you want(the future clone of Windows..but is my personal opinion)
or go and buy a Mac

anyway...I'have a friend(55 years old) that dont know nothing about Linux..nothing, but he want to leave Windows
I'recomend him FreeBSD, easy installer, easy to configure, easy to install some window manager
is the most close to Linux like...the time of redhat 7

no 15 sh#% steps to run a command that replace ifconfig or route
no 30 steps and problems to install a simple window manager
no 1 eye(syst#$^) that control everything and want to take control of all (and erase it)


----------



## shkhln (Apr 11, 2020)

pyret said:


> FreeBSD desktop has no future. Period.



I think, as a community, we have an attitude problem.


----------



## ralphbsz (Apr 12, 2020)

shkhln said:


> I think, as a community,


You are assuming that there is *ONE* community. No, there isn't. There are various communities. There is a community of people who like to and want to run FreeBSD as a desktop (or even laptop). Fine, more power to them. There are others who use it on a server. Some are interested in small devices (Raspberry Pi and friends). Some use it on clouds, or as a virtualization host for other OSes. There are a few professional users of FreeBSD (at companies like Netflix, Jupiter and NetApp, and smaller companies, such as Terry Kennedy), but I don't think many of those are represented on this forum. They have all different interests and opinions.

I for one happen to agree with pyret: The only future of using a desktop on FreeBSD (matter-of-fact, on any OS other than the big 4, in which I include Linux and ChromeOS) is for hobbyists and evangelists. And if those people want to use it, great. Just don't think for a moment that they can speak for others.

And to be clear: in my case it is not a religious bias. While today I use only Mac's as my user environment machines, I've spent about 15 years with a Windows laptop as my primary office machine (not a problem, works fine), Linux desktops both at home and in the office, and before that lots of Unix- and particular BSD-derived GUIs. Matter-of-fact, the first GUI I used was X on a BSD flavor (Ultrix); that must have been in the mid 80s.


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## shkhln (Apr 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> You are assuming that there is *ONE* community. …



I'm not defining community by interests but rather by who talks to whom. In that sense we have: mailing lists, this forum, Reddit, Twitter, some weirdos on Facebook, a couple of conferences and, maybe, local BUGs (assuming that's even a thing). While quiet technology users always vastly outnumber vocal users, it's pretty clear I'm not talking about them.


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## shkhln (Apr 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> The only future of using a desktop on FreeBSD (matter-of-fact, on any OS other than the big 4, in which I include Linux and ChromeOS) is for hobbyists and evangelists.



That's totally fine. The annoying part with FreeBSD are people actively discouraging _any_ kind of desktop development/usage. Somehow this is never an issue with OpenBSD, NetBSD or even Illumos derivatives.

(By the way, a lot of desktop FreeBSD development effort goes into maintaining various Linux compatibility layers, which are equally useful for server use cases: there are linuxkpi-based NIC drivers, for example.)


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## zirias@ (Apr 12, 2020)

pyret said:


> Ports do not take the place of the applications that run on desktops like Windows/Mac and even extending to Linux in some cases.
> 
> If you want to stream Hulu or Netflix on a FreeBSD desktop, you can't. If you want to run Skype on a FreeBSD desktop, you can't.


So, you imply only closed-source proprietery crap qualifies as "applications"? Well, thanks, now I know there's no need reading more of your nonsense.


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## shkhln (Apr 12, 2020)

Some of this closed source proprietary crap is actually coming to FreeBSD, assuming we can find a Chromium-derived Widevine-enabled Linux browser which is not a total PITA to package.


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## zirias@ (Apr 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> The only future of using a desktop on FreeBSD (matter-of-fact, on any OS other than the big 4, in which I include Linux and ChromeOS) is for hobbyists and evangelists. And if those people want to use it, great. Just don't think for a moment that they can speak for others.


This is, at best, misleading. Forget about "evangelists" for a moment, as this implies your operating system is your religion ... I've seen that with some Linux and Windows users in the wild and keep wondering what's driving those people, never seen such behavior exposed by a FreeBSD user _so far_...

So, leaving this out, does your statement imply that anything not for corporate business is hobbyism? In that case, it makes sense. But the same would hold for Linux as well. I'd say this has nothing to do with any (technical) properties of the operating systems and a lot more with marketing and support contracts etc.

For a deployment at home, a FreeBSD-desktop is as good as any other desktop, and for me personally, it has the advantage I only have to manage one operating system (as my server is FreeBSD already).


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## teo (Apr 12, 2020)

Zirias said:


> This is, at best, misleading. Forget about "evangelists" for a moment, as this implies your operating system is your religion ... I've seen that with some Linux and Windows users in the wild and keep wondering what's driving those people, never seen such behavior exposed by a FreeBSD user _so far_...
> 
> For a deployment at home, a FreeBSD-desktop is as good as any other desktop, and for me personally, it has the advantage I only have to manage one operating system (as my server is FreeBSD already).


 There's no future for systems that are apparently stillborn for a graphical desktop environment. DragonFly BSD is said by system experts to be a very good system, far superior to FreeBSD.    Religion or the supremacist complex has no relation to the subject it posts.


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## kpedersen (Apr 12, 2020)

My personal view on this matter is that the "desktop" has no future on any platform.

Not entirely happy about it but I strongly suspect that the casual user will move to a tablet / web browser environment. Companies that produce commercial software (Skype, Netflix, Adobe, etc) will not even provide a desktop client that needs porting. It will all be web (via something like WebAssembly). Game streaming hitting off will be the largest catalyst for this.

In order for FreeBSD to survive we only really need two things. We need drivers to keep the damn thing working on current hardware and a strong browser that keeps up with these web trends. The rest of the stuff (X11, Gnome, Qt) really doesn't matter any more than what desktop wallpaper you prefer.

FreeBSD's focus on servers may even be what keeps it alive once the idea of a desktop fades from computing... or at least until history repeats and the desktop rises to power again in ~80 years.

The driver support worries me. For that we either need users to be loud and convince hardware manufacturers that our number is large enough to make it worthwhile. Or the OpenBSD approach is to attract mainly developers and to do it themselves. FreeBSD currently seems to be trying to do a mix of both.


----------



## 20-100-2fe (Apr 12, 2020)

It looks like many people on this planet, thus including this forum, consider the word 'success' to be a synonym for 'domination'.
This is a fundamentally destructive belief: nature shows us life can only be 'successful' through cooperation.
Just have a look at a patch of wild plants and you'll understand: without all the others sharing the same place, none of them could thrive.
I wish FreeBSD will never be 'successful' if that meant we wouldn't have any other option.
Meanwhile, FreeBSD not dominating the desktop OS market doesn't mean it can't be a good option for some of us.


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## wolffnx (Apr 12, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> It looks like many people on this planet, thus including this forum, consider the word 'success' to be a synonym for 'domination'.
> This is a fundamentally destructive belief: nature shows us life can only be 'successful' through cooperation.



100% agreed, the "closed mind" is useless
I think Kpedersen is right,and is a
sad true for me,in a future everything will move in a cloud enviroment.
the only thing important will be a web browser.
it won't matter the OS...
Hopefully the desktop environment survives and there are options like there are today
such as choosing Qt or Gtk (also Gtk3 or Gtk2).
In 15 years there will be faster hardware
like today are SSD disk,and wont notice that Qt is slow beside Gtk2
for example.
but I'want the freedom of choose and the possibility of tweak everything like I'do in FreeBSD


----------



## zirias@ (Apr 12, 2020)

teo said:


> There's no future for systems that are apparently stillborn for a graphical desktop environment. DragonFly BSD is said by system experts to be a very good system, far superior to FreeBSD. Religion or the supremacist complex has no relation to the subject it posts.


"apparently" and "system experts". Do you have anything to say? Or are these hollow phrases all that is to expect here?


----------



## kpedersen (Apr 12, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> In 15 years there will be faster hardware



One of the worst things about it is that consumer hardware in 15 years might not be faster. The only thing we might be able to buy is weak / low powered thin clients that simply interact with servers in the cloud.

Yes, server hardware will be many magnitudes faster (especially if quantum computing can be used effectively). However I don't believe users or developers will be able to buy this stuff directly. This stuff will only be relevant for "cloud companies" who have probably signed an NDA.

My recommendation is to horde working maintainable hardware now for when this happens. Worst case scenario is that you have a cool collection of retro hardware


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## wolffnx (Apr 12, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> My recommendation is to horde working maintainable hardware now for when this happens. Worst case scenario is that you have a cool collection of retro hardware



yes,a good example of that is there nothing can beat a program writen in C in speed,but today almost anyone dont think of that because wont note the diference
(but I'do)


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## Argentum (Apr 12, 2020)

pyret said:


> FreeBSD desktop has no future.



I think the biggest misunderstanding here is the word "future". I believe that nobody here is a perfect oracle. In other words our ability to predict the long-term outcomes of Complex Adaptive Systems is extremely limited in time. Personally I believe that when I have used FreeBSD on my desktop 12 years, I can easily use it the next 12 years. Also, MATE on this machine feels much better than KDE twelve years ago.  There has clearly been a progress...

ZFS is another good thing. I have configured both of my FreeBSD desktop machines (in fact desktop and laptop) with ZFS boot. ZFS alone is a good reason to use FreeBSD. Cloned my old FreeBSD desktop just taking out one drive from ZFS mirror, installed it in the new machine and later rebuilt the mirror with new drive. 

And the most important thing is that it is all built from source and have the copy of that source on my hard drive. That very fact might be the most important point in talking about long term future. In case of cataclysmic events in Human History the Open Source has more chance to survive...


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## 6502 (Apr 12, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> Hopefully the desktop environment survives and there are options like there are today
> such as choosing Qt or Gtk (also Gtk3 or Gtk2).


Unfortunately, there is GPL license for some of them and this can limit the choice.


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## wolffnx (Apr 12, 2020)

6502 said:


> Unfortunately, there is GPL license for some of them and this can limit the choice.


I'dont know it about that,thanks, its a shame,gtk2 is much better,but its too much off topic to talk here


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## 6502 (Apr 12, 2020)

I was hesitant whether to write here or start new topic. I think about GUI software with FreeBSD version (X.org/Gnome, not web). In many cases the user hardware may not have all drivers to run native FreeBSD. How practical is to use desktop GUI from X terminal (e.g. on Raspberry Pi, Linux or even Windows)? FreeBSD server can be in the same local network or even in VM on the same hardware. I guess if server is at longer distance the latency can be too high and make remote work uncomfortable. In other words, the idea is to have GUI app on FreeBSD and solve driver problem with remote access if necessary.


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## teo (Apr 12, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> My personal view on this matter is that the "desktop" has no future on any platform.
> 
> Not entirely happy about it but I strongly suspect that the casual user will move to a tablet / web browser environment. Companies that produce commercial software (Skype, Netflix, Adobe, etc) will not even provide a desktop client that needs porting. It will all be web (via something like WebAssembly). Game streaming hitting off will be the largest catalyst for this.


That's what the terminal or CLI command line purists believed, however since many years ago tablet or mobile phone came out, the king is still the desktop environment (GUI) with Windows or Linux systems that most users prefer to keep using and will keep using. 



			
				kpedersen said:
			
		

> In order for FreeBSD to survive we only really need two things. We need drivers to keep the ..... thing working on current hardware and a strong browser that keeps up with these web trends. The rest of the stuff (X11, Gnome, Qt) really doesn't matter any more than what desktop wallpaper you prefer.
> 
> FreeBSD's focus on servers may even be what keeps it alive once the idea of a desktop fades from computing...



FreeBSD with server-only marketing will not survive as it has been proven over the past 25 years and is about to disappear. 



			
				kpedersen said:
			
		

> The driver support worries me. For that we either need users to be loud and convince hardware manufacturers that our number is large enough to make it worthwhile. Or the OpenBSD approach is to attract mainly developers and to do it themselves. FreeBSD currently seems to be trying to do a mix of both.



  But what users?  There are only a few users who consume what little marketing FreeBSD has and with that insignificant share in the world the system will end up dying.  FreeBSD must be extended to the desktop environment in a standardized way so that the number of users in the world will be increase and it will survive so that the hardware manufacturers or drivers will continue to supply it, because they will want it for the share of users in the world market.


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## ralphbsz (Apr 12, 2020)

Zirias said:


> So, leaving this out, does your statement imply that anything not for corporate business is hobbyism?


I'm sorry, I didn't express myself clearly. What I mean by hobbyists is: people who enjoy building and configuring and tinkering with their computer, rather than just using it. People who want a functioning computer just go to the store and buy one, or do the minimum amount of work to get it to function. Hobbyists are the ones who turn the setup of the computer into their hobby.

By the way, I am in that category for certain things. For example, I have a set of programs that monitor and control my water system at home, and I put a lot of work into tinkering with it. That is completely unnecessary, but fun for me.


kpedersen said:


> My personal view on this matter is that the "desktop" has no future on any platform.
> 
> Not entirely happy about it but I strongly suspect that the casual user will move to a tablet / web browser environment. Companies that produce commercial software (Skype, Netflix, Adobe, etc) will not even provide a desktop client that needs porting. ...


There is a lot of truth to that. Even desktop stuff (documents / spreadsheets / presentations) is moving to the web; you can now run both Microsoft Office (including Visio) and Google documents purely from a web browser. As Zoom has demonstrated, you can also do video-conferencing from a web browser. I have software engineer / scientist friends that use Chromebooks and do absolutely everything from them, including data analysis and coding. The only "program" that runs on their machine is a web browser. This is probably the trend things are moving in.


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## kpedersen (Apr 12, 2020)

teo said:


> That's what the terminal or CLI command line purists believed, however since many years ago tablet or mobile phone came out, the king is still the desktop environment (GUI) with Windows or Linux systems that most users prefer to keep using and will keep using.



I don't think the figures will support that. Most casual users I know do everything on their phone (not even a tablet).

Google's Web Office has a vastly larger user share than LibreOffice even though it has been around a fraction of the time. It is actually impressive how the uptake of web based programs has been.

Terminal or CLI purists left desktops years ago and unfortunately took many of their software expertise with them. The desktop reached its pinnacle years ago and has been regressing ever since.

Again, the main holdouts are gamers. If the industry can crack that one (I give it less than 15 years), the desktop is gone. Only some "retro" enthusiasts will remain. The future is CLI or Web Browsers. Luckily FreeBSD supports both just as well as any other OS.

And this is from someone who hates the "consumer cloud" and would like to see it fail in any way possible.

Edit: Forgot developers. In 5 years you are going to see Microsoft do a massive push of an online IDE (based on VSCode and their plugin infrastructure). It will be incredibly successful leveraging the popularity of GitHub, Teams and even LinkedIn. The vast majority of developers flock to it. The only holdouts are the CLI guys. Without desktop developers, you have nothing.


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## ugly-051 (Apr 12, 2020)

I’d say that any O/S that has a fundamental program for supporting end users and providing an intuitive GUI with support for gaming hardware would have a good standing in the desktop world.


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## Hakaba (Apr 12, 2020)

We can do two things for the support of tiers software.
First try to pass a message like «compatibility with FreeBSD is cool»
Second, adding a merge request in a lot of ported qoftware to add the freebsd compatibility and th installation instruction.
I saw on mac OS X macport, darwin ports and now homebrew.
Homebrew is popular because it is cool and documented in a lot of how to install in Mac OS X.


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## teo (Apr 12, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> Google's Web Office has a vastly larger user share than LibreOffice even though it has been around a fraction of the time. It is actually impressive how the uptake of web based programs has been.



The world is waking up every time and realizing what it uses, I don't think it will continue using the trojan horse and will prefer hardware as free software.


			
				kpedersen said:
			
		

> If the industry can crack that one (I give it less than 15 years), the desktop is gone. Only some "retro" enthusiasts will remain. The future is CLI or Web Browsers. Luckily FreeBSD supports both just as well as any other OS.


It has been over 10 years since devices (tablets and mobile phones) achieved commercial success worldwide, however they have,  not been able to replace 100%  to the  desktop graphic environment systems to date. The king of mass usage is still the graphical desktop environment consumed by Windows and Linux. Web browsers need a GUI because the masses of the world's population use it and do not use CLI.



			
				kpedersen said:
			
		

> Edit: Forgot developers. In 5 years you are going to see Microsoft do a massive push of an online IDE (based on VSCode and their plugin infrastructure). It will be incredibly successful leveraging the popularity of GitHub, Teams and even LinkedIn. The vast majority of developers flock to it. The only holdouts are the CLI guys. Without desktop developers, you have nothing.


So the massive use of systems on computers for graphical desktop environment is for long years more and will not decline.


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## Hakaba (Apr 13, 2020)

The good part of «web application» is the dependency over WM... So a light WM as DWM work very well.
(Same for games, but the driver/performance part is more important).
So, if .doc needs Google doc in future and code needs Visual Studio Code, it can be handle with any OS on any hardware.
And if tablet becomes the main format, you will by a tablet and install FreeBSD on it, as you do on desktop and server...
The situation described here is not a pain for FreeBSD as desktop/laptop/tablet system.

[Edit]
I forgot to mention that after years where git == github, self hosted gitlab increase deeply where I work. So the full web app hosted by big company is not a clear future.


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## christhegeek (Apr 13, 2020)

I have a cheap laptop/ultrabook i bought it some years ago it costed me 100 Euros it has aluminum body slim desing, 4gb of ram, i installed a M2 SSD drive and wifi works fine with freebsd i just want to configure touchpad with synaptics. It seems that runs freebsd very fine and on youtube i believe it is doing it even better than linux , so i can say freebsd has a future as a desktop.
It just needs more software.


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## 20-100-2fe (Apr 13, 2020)

christhegeek said:


> It just needs more software.



Can you give examples of what you're missing?


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## christhegeek (Apr 13, 2020)

zoom.us conference application,viber,an easy markdown editor (typora,hoorapad),  advanced development text editor ( i'm not sure maybe freebsd has that)   , some more professional video editors could be nice to have but at least to have gpu acceleration working in kdenlive/shotcut would be very good.   Having Cuda and/or opencl working on blender would be cool too.
Also porting widevine to freebsd would be something that it would useful to watch netflix,curiositystream etc.. or having a torrent video streaming application like webtorrent or popcorntime would be a must to have.
Well ... after all i don't think i would miss something.
I have made some freebsd installations and i get used to it , i only need to make the decision and have the psychological strength to go forward finding new problems i have never encountered yet.


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## shkhln (Apr 13, 2020)

christhegeek said:


> zoom.us conference application



A challenger appears…



Spoiler



They will eventually run into PulseAudio or QtWebEngine (Chromium) crash.


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## RodrigoBSD (May 8, 2020)

Could BSDs have any future on the desktop? I hope that if one day BSDs take up a considerable part on the desktop, they will maintain their nature without becoming Windows, giving everything that is served to the user with everything preconfigured and with default bloatware, so BSD is still a family of systems operations that necessarily require at least basic computer skills to be able to use them too if this makes the situation of the BSD on the desktop does not improve because I do not know about you, but I prefer a thousand times that people who use some BSD have such basic knowledge in computing before someone presents their ideas to make it the next Windows and I'm not a computer expert, I'm still studying and I'm not 'bragging about anything because I'm not an expert or less professional, but I never like to listen to those people talk about certain basic notions about how a program works, what operating system and what functions it performs What is the GPU, CPU, RAM, HDD, SSD and other electronic devices and how they work as if it were something that only the experts knew. Again, before you tell me something, I repeat, I am not an expert or a professional, but I am not a novice either, so I do not pretend to presume anything or pretend that someone interprets me with an aggressive or presumptuous tone. I'm just saying that there are certain basic notions that many exaggerate and that because they have no idea about that many times they stop using certain operating systems, finally yes,

PD:  When I say BSD I am referring to a family of operating systems and not to an operating system only, in addition I only mean by BSD the only ones that in my opinion truly differ from each other and can be considered independent and not a modification of the other as they are Most of BSD, I mean specifically, solely and exclusively /NetBSD/ FreeBSD/OpenBSD. Well these are the only ones that interest me, the rest are like the GNU / Linux distribution forks, the same but configured differently, for example Ubuntu which is nothing more than a Debian modification.
PD 2: NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD if they are my favorite operating systems and I do not have them installed because a new laptop has only 128GB of storage although later I will stop using it when I have a desktop PC and yes, I also think that it was necessary to clarify it.


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## richardtoohey2 (May 8, 2020)

I use OpenBSD as a desktop every day.  (And MacOS and Windows and Linux Mint).

Not sure what the question/point is?

Modern GUIs and web browsers are huge and packed with functionality and eye candy - so they need lots of resources.  I imagine the future they'll have even more functionality and even more eye candy and they'll need even more resources.


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## mark_j (May 8, 2020)

I believe, though cannot vouch for, OpenBSD has good desktop environments out-of-the-box.

Does FreeBSD have a future as a desktop? Well, at present, only coincidentally. It's main focus (and source of income for the foundation) is via corporate, predominantly headless, server systems.

GhostBSD and FuryBSD seem to do a good job packing up a desktop for FreeBSD. I use the former, haven't tried the latter.

There are a lot of constraints on the desktop, the major one being most are designed for gnu/systemd/linux. The other is graphics cards are poorly supported. It wasn't a problem when all you had were VGA cards, but nowadays it is a major stumbling block.


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## recluce (May 8, 2020)

FreeBSD is focused on servers, that is true. But that is no reason not to use it otherwise. I have two HTPCs running FreeBSD, one with XFCE, the other with Mate. 

Graphics Card: nonsense. For NVidia, there is the official NVidia driver which works just as well as on Linux. For AMD and Intel, there is a port that will enable pretty much the same capabilities as on Linux (it is based on the Open Source Linux drivers / kernel modules, but a few months behind). I use the Nvidia driver on one box, graphics/drm-kmod on the other. Both work just fine. If you need the most recent graphics card, NVidia is the best option for FreeBSD

Even on a brand new AMD Ryzen 3900X system with NVidia RTX 2070 Super, the FreeBSD desktop runs just fine (multi-boot with Windows and Linux).

If you need a shortcut, you could try either the sysutils/desktop-installer in Ports or use a FreeBSD-based desktop distribution, like GhostBSD.


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## gnath (May 8, 2020)

RodrigoBSD said:


> Could BSDs have any future on the desktop


Yes, FreeBSD already have good desktop. For bright future only need more users and developers to improve it. I am using 50GB storage for openbox WM and other required programs as a good desktop. You may first install FreeBSD on your laptop & then try whatever you like and what you are unable to do as desktop.


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## christhegeek (May 8, 2020)

I have a mini pc (media pc) on my tv ... a remnant of the pro smart-tv era which i kept cause i'm a geek and because i can do more stuff with it.
On linux i can't view a 1080p 60fps video on youtube , on freebsd i have no problem it has an extremely low profile nvidia gpu.
I suspect something like that may apply to my cheap ultrabook too cause on linux it can't play 1080p 60fps   i'm testing freebsd (can't make touchpad work) and without compositor or anti-tearing settings they play it without any freezes but i should test it of course with a compositor or a more heavy desktop environment.


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## weberjn (May 8, 2020)

The desktop is neither FreeBSD nor Linux, it is rather XFCE, KDE or Gnome..


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## ralphbsz (May 8, 2020)

You have to break your paragraphs into sentence. What you wrote below is nearly unintelligible.



RodrigoBSD said:


> Could BSDs have any future on the desktop?


If enough paid programmers get paid by their employers to do so, it might be able to compete with Linux. I don't think it can be done with volunteers. Volunteers, at a few hours per week, even at a dozen hours per week, will have a very hard time doing the same thing that lots of people who get paid to work 40+ hours can accomplish. And there are lots of people who get paid to improve Linux; they are paid by RedHat / SUSE / ..., but also by companies such as Intel, IBM, and other large Linux users and distributors.

However, we have to keep in mind that the marketshare of Windows and Mac together on the desktop adds up to roughly 100%. The most recent statistics I saw showed that about 80% of all desktop (non-mobile non-tablet) usage was Windows, about 20% was Macintosh, ChromeOS was in the low single-digit percent, and Linux was below 1% (I think it was 0.7% last I looked, a few weeks ago). Of those, ChromeOS is growing, all the others are shrinking. Now you have to take into account that all the BSDs together are probably 1/10th or 1/100th of the share of Linux. Which brings up the question: Why would anyone who is thinking rationally want to invest in that? Want a free OS for commodity hardware? Use Linux, it does the job well enough. Or use Windows; the license cost of Windows is much lower than the support cost for strange OSes. Want something that is easy to manage and use? Use ChromeOS.

In particular, at the GUI / user interface layer, there is very little distinction between *BSD and Linux. Any desktop environment or browser that's available for BSD is also available for Linux, and usually much better supported and tested there. The advantages of BSD come in the server setting (much more manageable, clean, and organized); in the desktop space, the differences are minor.

Other than hobbyists who like to play with their computers, and religious nuts who happen to hate Linux and Mac and Windows, there is no niche for using *BSD as a desktop. I happen to be in one of those categories (I play with computers as a hobby, which is why I have FreeBSD machines and Raspberry Pis at home).



> they will maintain their nature without becoming Windows,


What is wrong with Windows? Very little. It works excellently. It can be easily installed and managed (which is why it is one of the favorites of corporate environments, where support costs are very important). Whether you like to use it or not, it is quite easy to use, as legions of users demonstrate. On the contrary: I personally would like it if Linux and BSD became more like Windows, even though I find it unlikely that it will happen.



> giving everything that is served to the user with everything preconfigured and with default bloatware,


One man's bloatware is the next man's convenience. There are wonderful advantages to pre-installing lots of useful stuff, in particular if you want to attract more user who want to actually use the computer, not spent hours fiddling with it.

The remainder of your post I couldn't figure out what you meant.


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## shkhln (May 8, 2020)

RodrigoBSD said:


> so BSD is still a family of systems operations…



BSD is a license, not a family of anything.



RodrigoBSD said:


> Again, before you tell me something, I repeat, I am not an expert or a professional, but I am not a novice either, so I do not pretend to presume anything or pretend that someone interprets me with an aggressive or presumptuous tone.



What is this supposed to be about?



RodrigoBSD said:


> NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD if they are my favorite operating systems and I do not have them installed



Makes sense.


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## kpedersen (May 8, 2020)

RodrigoBSD said:


> Could BSDs have any future on the desktop?



Arguably the concept of a "desktop" is on life support. Web services and phones is the future of consumer computing.

As for "workstations".. FreeBSD is already there.
So I would suggest that since FreeBSD runs on both workstations and servers, it will outlive the desktop.


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## jb_fvwm2 (May 8, 2020)

they [ openbsd, freebsd, ghostbsd... ] already have attained first-choice desktop status, hindered only slightly
 by the latest hardware support, and further hindered by  guidance  [to newcomers] to computing or from other
desktop platforms not being widely known.   Additionally, scientific and other worthwhile pursuits are more adept coexisting with ground-up BSD desktop/workstations, in a plurality of disciplines.


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## rkyrk (May 8, 2020)

Any BSD has a future on the desktop for those that want it. I use it daily and have for a long time. It isn't whether a disto like Ubuntu makes it so or not. It is more about what the individual wants to do. Look at FreeBSD, or any other BSD, as a Debian like a distribution (yes, I know FreeBSD is more focused on servers) but it can be molded into whatever floats your boat.


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## RodrigoBSD (May 8, 2020)

[QUOTE = "shkhln, publicación: 462229, miembro: 54069"]
BSD es una licencia, no una familia de nada.



¿De qué se trata esto?



Tiene sentido.
[/CITAR]
BSD es tanto una licencia como una familia de sistemas operativos porque (NetBSD, OpenBSD y FreeBSD, que son los principales y más importantes) tienen en su nombre "BSD" al final, todos están basados en el sistema operativo de la Universidad de Berkley llamado BSD. La razón por la que dejé en claro que no soy un experto es porque no soy un novato, pero tampoco soy un experto y no pretendo tener un tono presuntuoso o agresivo con lo que dije.


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## RodrigoBSD (May 8, 2020)

[QUOTE = "kpedersen, publicación: 462248, miembro: 5532"]
Podría decirse que el concepto de "escritorio" está en soporte vital. Los servicios web y los teléfonos son el futuro de la informática del consumidor.

En cuanto a "estaciones de trabajo" .. FreeBSD ya está allí.
Por lo tanto, sugeriría que dado que FreeBSD se ejecuta tanto en estaciones de trabajo como en servidores, sobrevivirá al escritorio.
[/CITAR]
I do not think that smartphones are the future of the consumer market because in addition to being much inferior devices to PCs in everything with their operating systems, the way to handle them, how small are devices made for touch interfaces. In other words, they are not a bit of a joke compared to a PC and everyone I know has a smartphone but also has a PC, and PCs are renewed less often because they last several more years. Finally of so many things that could be said on this subject for me smartphones are nothing more than a complement to the PC that I almost never use except that I have no other option.


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## mickey (May 8, 2020)

RodrigoBSD said:


> ... so BSD is still a family of systems operations that necessarily require at least basic computer skills to be able to use them ...


Every computer, regardless of operating system, requires at least a minimal set of skills to put it to some use. People with no computer skills whatsoever SHOULD NOT be using computers in the first place, just like people without driving skills should not steer a vehicle of any kind. The kind of attitude that operating systems should make computers useable for everyone is what brought us Windows in the first place. Just my $0.05.


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## shkhln (May 8, 2020)

RodrigoBSD said:


> BSD es tanto una licencia como una familia de sistemas operativos porque (NetBSD, OpenBSD y FreeBSD, que son los principales y más importantes) tienen en su nombre "BSD" al final, todos están basados en el sistema operativo de la Universidad de Berkley llamado BSD. La razón por la que dejé en claro que no soy un experto es porque no soy un novato, pero tampoco soy un experto y no pretendo tener un tono presuntuoso o agresivo con lo que dije.



Что сказать-то хотел?


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## shkhln (May 8, 2020)

We should ban machine translation altogether, it's basically a crude anonimization technique (because it obfuscates writing style) mostly useful for trolling.


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## 20-100-2fe (May 8, 2020)

RodrigoBSD said:


> I hope that if one day BSDs take up a considerable part on the desktop



Why?


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## hitest (May 8, 2020)

Linux is more mainstream than the BSDs and it has yet to make inroads into the desktop market.  BSDs have less desktop use I suspect.
I run OpenBSD on this T410 Thinkpad and Slackware on my other units.


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## phalange (May 8, 2020)

hitest said:


> I run OpenBSD on this T410 Thinkpad and Slackware on my other units.



Yup, me too.  If the hardware supports it, BSD is great for daily use. I have FreeBSD on my well-supported Thinkpads and Slackware on the more fickle Asus units.


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## RodrigoBSD (May 8, 2020)

[QUOTE = "shkhln, publicación: 462297, miembro: 54069"]
Что сказать-то хотел?
[/CITAR]
Si ya sé que es posible que no entiendas todo lo que digo o que no me entiendas casi nada, pero uso el traductor de Google ya que mi nivel de inglés es medio y porque estoy estudiando otros idiomas (no indoeuropeos). no tengo la intención de mejorar mis habilidades en inglés Así que también uso el traductor de Google, incluso si trato de escribir algo bien en el traductor, siempre traduce algo malo.


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## mark_j (May 8, 2020)

This topic seems to have devolved into an attack on people's language skills.


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## shkhln (May 8, 2020)

My comment on machine translation doesn't have anything to do with language skills. It means precisely what it states, no subtext, no hidden implications.


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## PMc (May 8, 2020)

I dont think there should be a problem with that. It was soon obvious that Rodrigo speaks either french or spanish. OTOH, machine translation, while surprizingly good already, is just not suitable to argue over complex ideas.
(Isn't there a spanish BSD group?)

And yeah, shkhln, that's cute, but it doesn't help. Learning a language is a damned amount of work, specifically if you don't happen to have live people around to practice with. So what remains is machine translation.

Tip @*RodrigoBSD*
When You must do this, put your ideas in words as simple as possible. Use short sentences. Make visible breaks between the ideas. That should help.


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## mark_j (May 8, 2020)

PMc said:


> Tip @*RodrigoBSD*
> When You must do this, put your ideas in words as simple as possible. Use short sentences. Make visible breaks between the ideas. That should help.



Amen to that, regardless of the language!


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## 20-100-2fe (May 9, 2020)

Moreover, its title and nature are identical to another thread that has been active during the past weeks.
RTFM's little brother is RTFF (final F for Forum).


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## hruodr (May 9, 2020)

Das kommt mir spanisch vor.


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## strawman2511 (May 9, 2020)

RodrigoBSD said:


> Could BSDs have any future on the desktop?


My question is will BSDs can survive enough to see those day? Or it will lie in the ground with us.



RodrigoBSD said:


> those people talk about certain basic notions about how a program works, what operating system and what functions it performs What is the GPU, CPU, RAM, HDD, SSD and other electronic devices and how they work as if it were something that only the experts knew.


In my life, yes often and always, also my school still teach Pascal ...... but it is a clean programming language and is worth for every one (but it is not really effective). Don't care too much about that enjoy what you have "the way you think too much about it the way you make your life hard", playground with FreeBSD learn to love it and explore it instead of hating those annoying stuff. The smart people never telling the thing they know, they just answer when they need like all of us in here.


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## RodrigoBSD (May 10, 2020)

hruodr said:


> Das kommt mir spanisch vor.


Yes, I speak Spanish because it is the language I grew up with but I never liked speaking it. I'm interested in other languages, that's why I never write well (I don't even try in the slightest) and English translations tend to be so bad although translating into languages that if I'm interested in, like Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, all Chinese languages (Mandarin, Min, Yue or cantons, etc.) if I try to write a little better until I learn these languages and what I have in store, which is a long-term project, I will be a perfectionist in my language skills in those languages.

If I know that it is a lot of text and perhaps none of this interests you but I only commented on it, I hope not to disturb.


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## hruodr (May 10, 2020)

"Contentémonos con  lo razonable, no sea que por querer más lo perdamos todo, que quien mucho abarca, poco aprieta." (La Celestina)


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## mickey (May 10, 2020)

temmie2511 said:


> My question is will BSDs can survive enough to see those day? Or it will lie in the ground with us.


Only time will tell. If a sizeable number of desktop users finally comes to realize just how disgusting the crap they run on their desktops and call "operating system" really is, there might well be a future. I admit that's a big if, and so far it seems as if a vast majority of desktop users just doesn't care what nasty stuff goes on underneath, as long as it is all colorful, shiny and blinking on the surface.

On my desktops FreeBSD surely has a future... Two Windos 10 installations went into the woods, only one came out. My notebook now happily runs FreeBSD 12.1/KDE plasma 5, and if it wasn't for my love of games, I would stomp the other one right away.


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## aponomarenko (Feb 16, 2021)

With such FreeBSD derivatives like NomadBSD, GhostBSD and HelloSystem, the desktop has a future on BSD. Just need to slightly improve support for newer Wi-Fi/WWAN cards.


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## birbignano (Feb 16, 2021)

temmie2511 said:


> My question is will BSDs can survive enough to see those day? Or it will lie in the ground with us.



It seems that there is demand for BSDs in some niches ( servers for example ). Why? Because of this https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-FreeBSD-Improving-OSTS19

If Intel is going to put money and people behind FreeBSD they must know that the OS is not so forgotten.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 17, 2021)

Who is this "Desktop" guy and why does everyone keep wondering if he's going to make it with FreeBSD? Has Beastie got something personal against him?

I've got so many screenshots posted with everybody else here who runs FreeBSD it should be a moot question by now IMO.


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## wolffnx (Feb 17, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> Who is this "Desktop" guy and why does everyone keep wondering if he's going to make it with FreeBSD?


is like a dejavu or a glitch in the matrix


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 17, 2021)

wolffnx said:


> is like a dejavu or a glitch in the matrix



Some people just aren't cut out for the Red Pill...


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## soctafianto (Feb 19, 2021)

aponomarenko said:


> With such FreeBSD derivatives like NomadBSD, GhostBSD and HelloSystem, the desktop has a future on BSD. Just need to slightly improve support for newer Wi-Fi/WWAN cards.


Just installed GhostBSD on my cheapo PC, running well with some minor glitch. ASRock FM2A68M-DG3+,  AMD A6 7400K, DDR3 8GB, SSD 128GB and second hand Radeon R7, put on open case with total cost under $200. What I like from GhostBSD is it can recognize TP-Link USB WiFi dongle and connect automatically.

I was once exploring Free BSD on Thinkpad X250. Have to start WiFi manually. Both system not really smooth when video playing fast moving objects like hands movement. Only this PC is much much better compared to the laptop. But overall it's satisfying, I have something to play with.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 19, 2021)

One thing I appreciate about GhostBSD is that they've actually adopted OpenRC. It's per-device management capabilities are very useful for a stable desktop. OpenRC practically takes init/rcNG, and takes its to the extreme in simplicity and modernity.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Feb 20, 2021)

soctafianto said:


> Just installed GhostBSD on my cheapo PC, running well with some minor glitch. ASRock FM2A68M-DG3+,  AMD A6 7400K, DDR3 8GB, SSD 128GB and second hand Radeon R7, put on open case with total cost under $200. What I like from GhostBSD is it can recognize TP-Link USB WiFi dongle and connect automatically.
> 
> I was once exploring Free BSD on Thinkpad X250. Have to start WiFi manually. Both system not really smooth when video playing fast moving objects like hands movement. Only this PC is much much better compared to the laptop. But overall it's satisfying, I have something to play with.



My idea of a cheapo machine was the first laptop I bought, a Gateway Solo 1450. It comes standard with a 1.2-GHz single core Intel Celeron processor, 512MB RAM, 20GB hard drive, DVD-ROM drive, and a LCD screen with a resolution of 1024x768.

I had a Gateway PC with an Intel 500MHz Katmai (the one the NSA supposedly backdoored) with 512MB RAM, and monster 13GB HDD, But it had a 100MB Zip Drive. So this was an upgrade for me because I upgraded it to 1GB RAM myself.

That's what I had to work with when I started using PC-BSD and that came standard at the time with KDE3(?) so mine was doing good to run it.

That's when I started looking into ways to conserve resources, started using x11-wm/fluxbox and taking PC-BSD apart to make it more like FreeBSD by using apps of my choosing to make the most out of what I had to work with.

One of the Moore Bros. asked why, is how I became the black sheep and the rest is history many times told.

FreeBSD was the future I had in that laptop and started using FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE with it. I had a minimal number of programs running but learned which apps suited my needs and used the least resources and it got me here.

I run Thinkpads now with resources to spare but still use most off the same apps I did back then, am very happy with FreeBSD as a desktop and all I use. Online anyway. I just bought a W520 with WIN10PRO on it I'll keep offline to play Oblivion on.

But it's a toy compared to my boxen and nothing more than a toy for me. I can do anything on the W520 running FreeBSD with same specs as the W520 running WIN10PRO online of off. Only I wouldn't feel subject to online exploit at any second on my FreeBSD boxen like I would Windows.

I've had OpenBSD boxen and if you can run FreeBSD you can run OpenBSD. But FreeBSD feels more polished as a desktop to me and I'm very comfortable using it. That may be from having more experience with it.

I have 5 laptops up and running FreeBSD in the room I'm sitting in, the W520 currently serving as my .mp3 player. One T61 shut down with Kali Linux on it used for Entertainment Purposes Only. A T43 running an older version of OpenBSD I'm going to turn into a FreeBSD box using pkg to preserve my Precious and the Windows box my bedside to listen to tunes through headphones to count sheep by.

FreeBSD meets all my general desktop use needs and I have a plethora of screenshots posted using it to do various things or serve various tasks. I taught myself how to use it and learned the hard way by not consulting the handbook. But I never gave up and rose up to meet the task.

Now I've written a Beginners Tutorial for people that can use Windows, except my Sister, should be able to follow to get to a fully functional FreeBSD desktop. It's a learning experience from that point on and if you're trying there will always be someone willing to help that can figure out what you can't from experience.

But not everyone is cut out for it. Plain and simple. Many Linux people have tried, failed, blamed FreeBSD for it, gone back to Linux and whined about how FreeBSD wasn't ready for the desktop.

I feel sorry for them so from time to time do some image manipulation or write a little poem to make them feel better. Because I care.


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## KenGordon (Mar 3, 2021)

fernandel said:


> Thank you. Now is age average 53 years.
> Why I ask about ages?
> Talking is about future of FreeBSD Desktop. And if are user old and average is for example 60 years is easier to predict the future


OK. I'll screw up your stats: I am 78.

Ken Gordon


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 3, 2021)

mickey said:


> Every computer, regardless of operating system, requires at least a minimal set of skills to put it to some use. People with no computer skills whatsoever SHOULD NOT be using computers in the first place, just like people without driving skills should not steer a vehicle of any kind. The kind of attitude that operating systems should make computers useable for everyone is what brought us Windows in the first place. Just my $0.05.


Here's the change you've got coming from five cents.

I'm a 64 year old 10th Grade dropout with a GED who taught myself to use every computer and Operating System I have ever touched or used through experience using it. In 1993 was given a floppy for an AppleII that took me 3 days to master and on to a future of multiple Thinkpads running SysV, FreeBSD and OpenBSD by ability gained through experience alone. 

I struggled a bit learning FreeBSD, possibly more than if I had read the Handbook, but I heard the call of Ma Bell and answered it. Then wrote a Beginners Tutorial with the intended audience of someone who has never used the commandline and teach them to build a desktop ground up using ports so they wouldn't have to struggle like I did.

It was featured in articles twice by freebsdnews.com and their first article picked up and carried by the English and Arabic Facebook pages of bsdmag.com. It's helped some people and who knows what their future holds from learning FreeBSD? 

I didn't want to use Windows and it wasn't all that easy to teach myself to use that. The only thing I knew about a PC was if you push this button it powered up and everything about it from that point on was something Ii had never seen before. 

Didn't like Windows or Linux. I wanted to use that arcane in appearance terminal as seen on TV and movie screens. That was my idea of a real computer and using one consisted of and Windows users didn't have cool pocket protectors. They had Windows and it came with solitaire, virus, trojans, and naky pix of Britney to click for easy installation.

If they don't use a computer how are they supposed to develop those skills? Pocket calculators had just been introduced when I quit school. Where would I be today if not for my fingers taking a liking to a computer keyboard? Divorced from Britney and dating Scarlett Johansson, maybe?


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## Argentum (Mar 3, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> If they don't use a computer how are they supposed to develop those skills? Pocket calculators had just been introduced when I quit school. Where would I be today if not for my fingers taking a liking to a computer keyboard? Divorced from Britney and dating Scarlett Johansson, maybe?


Many people are not actually using *computers*, but they are just using *Web Browsers* these days. In the same way, they are not using *electric motors*, but *washing machines* and *vacuum cleaners* instead. In this regard, IMHO, the FreeBSD as a platform is just doing fine. All of my 3 web browsers are running very well on this FreeBSD machine...


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## Mjölnir (Mar 3, 2021)

soctafianto said:


> Just installed GhostBSD on my cheapo PC, running well with some minor glitch. ASRock FM2A68M-DG3+,  AMD A6 7400K, DDR3 8GB, SSD 128GB and second hand Radeon R7, put on open case with total cost under $200.


 (except for the open housing.  Don't.  1. radio waves 2. cooling can be worse 3. dirt, dust & noise)


soctafianto said:


> What I like from GhostBSD is it can recognize TP-Link USB WiFi dongle and connect automatically.


You could kindly ask them to file in a patch back upstream.  That'd be fair, wouldn't it?


soctafianto said:


> I was once exploring Free BSD on Thinkpad X250. Have to start WiFi manually. Both system not really smooth when video playing fast moving objects like hands movement. Only this PC is much much better compared to the laptop. But overall it's satisfying, I have something to play with.


Video-decoders in hardware or at least some special CPU instructions to support this, naturally can make a notable difference.


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## CuatroTorres (Mar 3, 2021)

Argentum said:


> Many people are not actually using *computers*, but they are just using *Web Browsers* these days. In the same way, they are not using *electric motors*, but *washing machines* and *vacuum cleaners* instead. In this regard, IMHO, the FreeBSD as a platform is just doing fine. All of my 3 web browsers are running very well on this FreeBSD machine...


I have a similar story when I wanted to relearn bash 15 years ago. I asked a silly question in IRC wanting to use "Linux", when I meant using terminal applications instead of X. Computing fundamentals must be separated from ordinary use of the equation. You don't use the system, you use applications.
An OS is as good as the apps it runs and as popular as it's easy.


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## Jose (Mar 3, 2021)

Argentum said:


> Many people are not actually using *computers*, but they are just using *Web Browsers* these days...


I wish this were true. Mobile phones are wrecking the Web. It's basically unusable because the bloated browsers are more focused on showing you huge video ads than they are in showing you content. This is why everyone wants you to install their crappy, spyware infested app.
I'm swimming against this current, of course, but I'm finding more and more sites that don't work on Firefox Klar.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 3, 2021)

Back on topic: I'd guess the vast majority of FreeBSD developers uses it as their daily desktop driver.  Thus we can expect a working desktop foundation for a very long time.  Am I wrong here?


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## Barney (Mar 3, 2021)

Freebsd will always be 3 years behind Linux. Freebsd is great if you don't need to do anything, like build a touch application.


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## jardows (Mar 3, 2021)

Barney said:


> Freebsd will always be 3 years behind Linux. Freebsd is great if you don't need to do anything, like build a touch application.


Boy, if there was only something existing like wmt(4)

Of course, you could always do what this guy did back in 2009 for touch support on his HTC Shift.  Not sure how far behind Linux that was. 

The reality is, you can complain about something not working, or you can actually do the work to try to get it working.  If you aren't willing to put in the work, don't complain.  Sure, make polite requests for features, but when they are framed from ignorance and with a condescending tone, you won't get far.  

Now I don't use touch applications (I only use a smart phone because there really isn't any other good choice for cell phones these days), but I sure do a lot of stuff with FreeBSD, like music, photo and video editing.  I can play some games with it too.  Unfortunately Libre/Open Office can't even compare to the features I get with MS Word and Excel, but that's what Virtualbox is for.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 3, 2021)

Argentum said:


> Many people are not actually using *computers*, but they are just using *Web Browsers* these days. In the same way, they are not using *electric motors*, but *washing machines* and *vacuum cleaners* instead. In this regard, IMHO, the FreeBSD as a platform is just doing fine. All of my 3 web browsers are running very well on this FreeBSD machine...


I have to agree with you on that point. My sister works at a State Facility at a computer all day and has for years but the only thing she knows about computers is the program she runs. When it crashes or whatever it's somebody from their IT Dept. like us that she calls to come over and fix it.

She's openly admitted after seeing it she couldn't follow the Beginners Tutorial I wrote, or her Hubby. The guy who lives upstairs from me has a Degree in Computer Science Comunications but uses Windows now and could only follow some of the more simple terminology spoken here,

I don't bother with the rest. They have their SmartyPhones and Facebook in their faces  most of the time but you're right. It's browsing they do most.


----------



## KenGordon (Mar 3, 2021)

I have a couple of reasons I want to become much better than I am now with FreeBSD. First of all, it was an early version, somewhere around 2.5, or something like that, that I used to set up an e-mail server and web server for the College at the University of Idaho at which I was working at the time. Installation was so easy I couldn't believe it, and the result was very, very reliable. The College used it for some years until the University caught up. Then the College switched to Computer Services' offerings, which made me happy that I didn't have to support it any longer.

I had tried Linux Ver. 0.99 at the time, and didn't care for it.

In the meantime, I learned BASH and some UNIX commands, but was never really very good at SYSADing. I also ran an HP-UX server for the staff and faculty at our College. Whenever I ran into a problem I couldn't solve, I asked the other tech on campus who had been through about $30K of training on UNIX. He was very good.

I also set up a small LAN for a professor for his classes, and at one time, had to call a friend of mine who worked at Computer Services for some small help with an issue I was having with it. His reply was, "Well, Ken, I don't think I can help you. Your network is the only one on campus that works." I said, "Oh", and eventually fixed the problem myself. All the above was a number of years ago, of course, since I retired from that job several years ago. As I mentioned elsewhere here, I am 78 now.

The other reason I want to become better at using FreeBSD is that I am totally fed up with Billy Gates' offering. Therefore I want to dump Windows from all our computers here, 6 of them at last count. And this means that I have to come up with a desktop for the compto-klutzes in my family to use which will be familiar enough to them that getting them to learn to use it will present a minimal effort on my part.

So far, I have tried at least 3 "packaged" desktop systems: one I can't remember the name of, the second one was FuryBSD (which is no longer supported), and most recently GhostBSD. I liked FuryBSD. I liked the xfce desktop too. I am not too pleased with GhostBSD since all the root stuff I commonly use is not really available in that system. 

It is looking as though my best solution is a full FreeBSD install, and for me to build my own desktop for the other members of my family. So, I have a lot to learn yet about that too.

And whoever mentioned that most users do mainly web-surfing, e-mail, and some word processing is, in my opinion, absolutely correct. To most computer users, a computer is simply an appliance, and they could care less than less about how it works. That is left to us "techs".

And this is another reason I am a member of this forum. I really appreciate the expertise and overall kindness to noobs like me that I find here.

Anyway, I think this is enough gabbing. Now I have to go to work.

Ken Gordon


----------



## Jose (Mar 3, 2021)

I think this would be better in the "Introduce Yourself..." thread, but whatevs. Thumbs up.








						Introduce yourself, tell us who you are and why you chose FreeBSD
					

Who's new to FreeBSD? Did you migrate from another OS and what was your reason?




					forums.freebsd.org


----------



## KenGordon (Mar 3, 2021)

Well, Jose, although I agree with you in principle, I guess what I am doing by the above is, more or less, asking where I must start in order to build an effective and reliable desktop.

And thank you for the words of encouragement.   You're a good fellow.

Ken Gordon


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## Jose (Mar 3, 2021)

I don't think I would be of much help even though I took on the role of sysadmin with my family some years ago.

We all used Gentoo Linux for a while. I had a colleague that didn't believe me, and actually buttonholed my wife at a party to ask if it was true. The thing is I got tired of it, and bought them all Macs.

Now I find myself strongly disagreeing with the direction Apple has taken*, but I frankly don't know where to turn next. I inflicted an Ubuntu laptop on one of my children, and reviews are definitely mixed on that front. Another is thinking of buying a Windows laptop.

I'm comfortable running Openbox on Freebsd, and don't mind typing "xinit" in a terminal window so I don't even run a display manager. I fear this would not do for the rest of my family.

I'd be very interested in your solution if you find one.

* I'm happy to find that I'm not alone in Vermaden's links








						A retrospective look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard
					

Yes, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is as good as I remembered.




					morrick.me


----------



## KenGordon (Mar 3, 2021)

Oh! And one more thing: I definitely believe that the Desktop DOES have future with/on FreeBSD for at least the reasons I listed above: 1) some users, probably not many....yet...are fed up with Windows and want, very seriously, to dump it completely, 2) others like me find Linux too "messy" 3) FreeBSD is (or was?) faster and more secure than most versions of Linux. And there are other reasons.

Ken Gordon


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## KenGordon (Mar 3, 2021)

I understand, Jose. I'll post somewhere on this forum my successes and failures as they occur. Probably not here, though. I'll probably begin another thread....

Thanks again,

Ken Gordon


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## zirias@ (Mar 3, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> Back on topic: I'd guess the vast majority of FreeBSD developers uses it as their daily desktop driver.  Thus we can expect a working desktop foundation for a very long time.  Am I wrong here?


I think the "best" thought in this thread so far was to better ask: Does desktop have a future? From being THE interface for using a device (well, after the CLI era), it's becoming more and more a niche.

But then, a niche e.g. for developers, so your statement still holds  Writing software on a tablet is nothing anyone would want to do and keep their sanity…


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## Mjölnir (Mar 3, 2021)

jardows said:


> The reality is, you can complain about something not working, or you can actually do the work to try to get it working.  If you aren't willing to put in the work, don't complain.  Sure, make polite requests for features, but when they are framed from ignorance and with a condescending tone, you won't get far.


+1


jardows said:


> [...]  Unfortunately Libre/Open Office can't even compare to the features I get with MS Word and Excel, but that's what Virtualbox is for.


Whenever I was forced to use MS Office, I found it overly complex & non-intuitive to use.  IMHO LibreOffice is much better in this regard, and I never missed a feature.


----------



## zirias@ (Mar 3, 2021)

It depends on what you need. MS Office had pretty fine "collaboration" features for a long time (reviews, change tracking, etc). The point when I never wanted to see "Word" again was when I was forced to use it for my diploma thesis. Several backup files and being extra careful with a lot of things (like e.g. how exactly you'd embed a diagram) were always needed; Word was notorious for just shredding any larger document at any time. Admittedly, this was a long time ago, maybe they improved meanwhile.

For me, LibreOffice is pretty fine and just works. And for a really large document, I'd always prefer LaTeX anyways


----------



## Mjölnir (Mar 3, 2021)

Jose's use case & that example of shreddered backups shows that FreeBSD is in fact a good base for a desktop system (with frequent ZFS snapshots).  I was shocked when a friend told me she has to use Word to write her doctor's thesis.  How can a public university (note etym.: _universitas_) force their students to use specific computer programs of a monopolist (at minimum that proprietary data format)?  When I was @uni, LaTeX was it, hopefully it is still for the hard sciences.  And it's perfectly usable even for _noobs_, since they can use mature GUIs for LaTeX.


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## ralphbsz (Mar 4, 2021)

Argentum said:


> Many people are not actually using *computers*, but they are just using *Web Browsers* these days.


That's a VERY important observation. And it is the genesis of browser-only machines like Chromebooks. I still have a full-function laptop (*), but 99% of the time, I'm in one of two applications: A web browser and terminal emulator. I do most of my software development still from the shell, and that's in spite of the fact that today there are very good web-based development environment, and you can get very nice terminal emulators for web browsers.

Matter-of-fact, I know two of the fathers of Unix and BSD use Chromebooks as their daily driver (Ken, and the other one is not Kirk).

(*) Footnote: I define a full-function computer as one that has an OS with working shell and a full development environment, so you can compile, link and run programs. In that sense, neither Chromebooks nor tablets are computers, since they don't have development tools.



Mjölnir said:


> Back on topic: I'd guess the vast majority of FreeBSD developers uses it as their daily desktop driver.  Thus we can expect a working desktop foundation for a very long time.  Am I wrong here?


The first statement (most developers ...): I don't know whether it is true. We hear conflicting information.

The second statement: If that were true, it would have been true for the last ~20-30 years, because during all that time it was possible to run a GUI on *BSD. Yet, very few of the developers seem to have invested much effort into the desktop; what we have today is mostly a port/package of things developed on and for Linux.

Why is this? I don't know for sure, but my educated guess is that 90% of BSD developers are just not interested in GUI or desktop development, but in tools and OSes.


----------



## Mjölnir (Mar 4, 2021)

Well, that's natural since they're not GUI developers, but FreeBSD i.e. OS developers.  And for shure they're able to get their GUI up & running w/o asking for help here, except for the few cases when they run into an incompatibility issue with their hardware.  But since they know of this risk, most will only purchase compatible hardware...  But they have an interest to provide the underlying interfaces that desktop SW can access.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 4, 2021)

I was under the impression Macs were very popular with Developers.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Mar 4, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> I was under the impression Macs were very popular with Developers.


According to Stack Overflow's survey, 27.5% of developers use a Mac and is one percent more than those who use Linux.


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## mickey (Mar 4, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> Here's the change you've got coming from five cents.
> 
> [...]
> 
> If they don't use a computer how are they supposed to develop those skills? Pocket calculators had just been introduced when I quit school. Where would I be today if not for my fingers taking a liking to a computer keyboard? Divorced from Britney and dating Scarlett Johansson, maybe?


I believe you got me all wrong here.

There is nothing wrong with someone who doesn't have any computer skills, if he's willing to go the extra mile and learn how to use one. Everyone at some point had no computer skills and you gotta start somewhere.

The approach that I consider utterly wrong, is to create operating systems for people who are basically NOT willing to learn how to use a computer (let alone some other things). Operating systems that could be used by a lobotomized monkey not only introduce a lot of lobotomized monkeys to the user base, but will also alienate people that are actually perfectly capable of using a computer cause they will feel limited in just about every aspect.


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## Argentum (Mar 4, 2021)

mickey said:


> The approach that I consider utterly wrong, is to create operating systems for people who are basically NOT willing to learn how to use a computer (let alone some other things). Operating systems that could be used by a lobotomized monkey not only introduce a lot of lobotomized monkeys to the user base, but will also alienate people that are actually perfectly capable of using a computer cause they will feel limited in just about every aspect.


Agree. If something is fully foolproof, then only fools want to use it.


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## a6h (Mar 4, 2021)

Zirias said:


> The point when I never wanted to see "Word" again was when I was forced to use it for my diploma thesis.


Similar experience. I had to use Word with some Microsoft mathematics plugin (I can't remember the name) to type multiple pages, full of mathematical expression. Using LaTeX or groff wasn't an option. Every single second was torture.

[EDIT] P.S. Of course, it's not a case for using LibreOffice (it's the same when using mathematical expressions), but the point is: as a Windows user and having no experience with CLI, POSIX, etc. you'll miss a lot. You may never have a chance to explorer other options, e.g. groff.


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## zirias@ (Mar 4, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> How can a public university (note etym.: _universitas_) force their students to use specific computer programs of a monopolist (at minimum that proprietary data format)? When I was @uni, LaTeX was it, hopefully it is still for the hard sciences.


It just depends on the individual professor's preferences. This was a diploma thesis in CS, still this professor had his whole institute work with MS products. Other institutes expected documents to be done with LaTeX, which I preferred a lot for a large document. Of course I told them I don't own an MS Office license and don't intend to buy one, response was "here take this institute laptop with everything installed". At least, at that time Microsoft already used OOXML, which they had standardized by ECMA and later ISO/IEC.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 4, 2021)

mickey said:


> Operating systems that could be used by a lobotomized monkey not only introduce a lot of lobotomized monkeys to the user base, but will also alienate people that are actually perfectly capable of using a computer cause they will feel limited in just about every aspect.


This is a point I often make. It's the difference between Windows and FreeBSD. Too many of those monkeys come here and attempt to complain about FreeBSD that way.


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## 6502 (Mar 4, 2021)

Not sure whether Windows is for monkeys but Android definitely is.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 4, 2021)

mickey said:


> There is nothing wrong with someone who doesn't have any computer skills, if he's willing to go the extra mile and learn how to use one. Everyone at some point had no computer skills and you gotta start somewhere.
> 
> The approach that I consider utterly wrong, is to create operating systems for people who are basically NOT willing to learn how to use a computer (let alone some other things). Operating systems that could be used by a lobotomized monkey not only introduce a lot of lobotomized monkeys to the user base, but will also alienate people that are actually perfectly capable of using a computer cause they will feel limited in just about every aspect.



Well you made the leap from lobotomized monkey to space age whizkid quicker than 2001 - A Space Odyssey.

There are a lot of moneys in the jungle I live in. Some have never touched one and wouldn't know how to teach themselves. Some will never learn and are fine with a smartphone. Some know little to nothing about the Internet, others live somehow without an online presence and don't want anything to do with a computer.

So lets dump Windows and all Operating Systems except UNIX, because we can all use it. Can't you?

"Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape!" That would be a good slogan for UNIX Distopian v.1.0 when it comes out. Next year.


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## tyson (Mar 4, 2021)

I personally use pure FreeBSD for now, but just discovered that project HelloSystem (thx Vermaden for those news posts).
Its still very early stage but looks promising. Could be nice replacement for those Mac's and Windows users who wish to run away from big company sitting in their device.

(some buy on youtube giving it a go)




_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah8xZ1N68Vo_










						GitHub - helloSystem/hello: Desktop system for creators with a focus on simplicity, elegance, and usability. Based on FreeBSD. Less, but better!
					

Desktop system for creators with a focus on simplicity, elegance, and usability. Based on FreeBSD. Less, but better! - GitHub - helloSystem/hello: Desktop system for creators with a focus on simpli...




					github.com


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## Mjölnir (Mar 5, 2021)

I doubt they can catch up on more than 3 decades experience on GUI software design techniques & models within just a few years.  But hey, maybe they're exceptionally smart people applying modern development methods, that can compensate this lack of experience.  Last not least they have some background, through _Lumina_ IIRC.


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## kpedersen (Mar 5, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> I doubt they can catch up on more than 3 decades experience on GUI software design techniques & models within just a few years.


Just looks like they are going to clone macOS from the 90's. I am sure these guys can manage. It is probably just a matter of being very time consuming.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 5, 2021)

I gave my i386 Sony Vaio with 1.6GHz Intel CoreDuo, 2GB RAM with a fresh build of FreeBSD 11.3 or something I had built and set aside to my neighbor across the hall about a month ago.

Somebody sold him a i386 Compaq with BIOS password he didn't know and I couldn't guess that wasn't as good as my Sony so I gifted it to him. I figured if they've never run Windows how much harder would it be to teach them something worthwhile learning? 

A usr account with all the app tweaking and system geeking that make it a desktop for me all set up ready to log in under my user name and I maintained root. I read aloud the usr password as I typed and he wrote it down. Then I rebooted and set him down in front of it to let him login himself.

He could not enter my usrname jitte correctly much less my password, nor grasp the concept of tapping the keys. I changed the password to 11111 and he could not get that right. Net with fingers, eraser end of a pencil, my never-leave-home-without-it Zebra autograph seeker pen, or any amount of words or demonstrations of doing it correctly.

So I got him to the desktop, showed him how easy it was to access editors/leafpad to practice typing on his own and set him free for a month to see how he did. He still could not type out 11111 to login the account himself yesterday. 

I told him there was no use having it if he couldn't log in, because that's about as easy as it's going to get with any OS or banana pi found foraging. Threw rocks at him and he scurried back down the evolutionary scale without the added Daemons in his life to overcome than the demons faced by any normal human bean.

I was going to give it to another guy who has never used a computer either, but I'm proponent of Natures Way and quoting DEVO Jocko Homo lyrics. From this day forth, "To not interfere in the natural development of the sub-species observed" in my Trek what will now become known as the Prime Directive.


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## tuxador (Mar 5, 2021)

Jose said:


> I don't think I would be of much help even though I took on the role of sysadmin with my family some years ago.
> 
> We all used Gentoo Linux for a while. I had a colleague that didn't believe me, and actually buttonholed my wife at a party to ask if it was true. The thing is I got tired of it, and bought them all Macs.
> 
> ...


If you want a beginner-friendly Gnu/linux for your family i strongly recommand  Manjaro linux, since it's based on archlinux.
Ubuntu in my humble opinion is unstable because of their heavily patched packages.


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## KenGordon (Mar 5, 2021)

Ha ha!   You guys are such a kick! It is a real pleasure being here.

Ken Gordon


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## Deleted member 66267 (Mar 6, 2021)

tuxador said:


> If you want a beginner-friendly Gnu/linux for your family i strongly recommand  Manjaro linux, since it's based on archlinux.
> Ubuntu in my humble opinion is unstable because of their heavily patched packages.


On the other hand I recommend MX Linux or Q4OS, both are Debian based.


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## Deleted member 66267 (Mar 6, 2021)

IMHO Windows XP is still far better as a desktop system than modern Linux desktop. And BSD desktop is nothing but Linux desktop stack running on-top the BSD OS. Linux desktop is far more beautiful but I found myself to be more comfortable with the old guy. I think Windows XP is more a desktop than Linux desktop which I think more like a mobile phone. This is the reason I recommend Q4OS, it looks like the old XP. But being based on the old KDE3 fork TDE, it lacks many features of a modern Linux desktop environment. So if you can't live with such a limited environment, I recommend MX Linux, which is XFCE based. Both are rock stable.

BTW, most people I know running BSD as desktop usually use a WM but not a full DE.


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## kpedersen (Mar 6, 2021)

also-ran said:


> IMHO Windows XP is still far better as a desktop system than modern Linux desktop.


I agree with this. It looked ugly as hell but the usability was there. I am certainly not an expert in UX (these days I suspect no-one is) but it always surprises me when people clone macOS rather than Windows ~2003 if they want usability.


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## Deleted member 66267 (Mar 6, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> I agree with this. It looked ugly as hell but the usability was there. I am certainly not an expert in UX (these days I suspect no-one is) but it always surprises me when people clone macOS rather than Windows ~2003 if they want usability.


There is helloSystem as a macOS clone on-top of FreeBSD. I wonder if someone would take the patches from Q4OS to create a XP clone on-top of FreeBSD?  XP still make me surprise about how stable and lightweight it is. It work beautifully on a very slow speed old HDD and use only about 100MB of ram on startup.  What make me feel most comfortable when using XP is the font rendering, though. I think newer Windows really somehow lost the font rendering quality even though it's all ClearType after all. Anyway, I wonder if anyone on the FreeBSD desktop could beat XP's record of only 100MB of ram on startup? I think it should be some WM based but not a DE.


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## fryshke (Mar 6, 2021)

Windows XP... font rendering... good? Are you still on 720p screen?


kpedersen said:


> I agree with this. It looked ugly as hell but the usability was there. I am certainly not an expert in UX (these days I suspect no-one is) but it always surprises me when people clone macOS rather than Windows ~2003 if they want usability.


Windows XP usability - like the taskbar, where order of open programs are random (well, in order in which you opened your apps) and not same order for years where you pin an app and it stays there - like since 7 in Windows and since forever in macOS. Or start menu without search, without basic functionality like calculations, translations, definitions, indexed metadata in photos, emails, whatever, like in Spotlight Search?

Yea Windows XP usability was great, especially if you used wifi and bluetooth.


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## kpedersen (Mar 6, 2021)

fryshke said:


> Windows XP... font rendering... good? Are you still on 720p screen?


I remember being at a convention where even Microsoft admitted that although the font rendering in Windows XP wasn't accurate, it was much preferred by users.

They even joked about it being a compromise between usability and keeping artists happy. They didn't quite know which route to take.

Surely you have noticed that the fonts are quite misshapen in Windows XP but they were absolutely crystal clear. Fonts in Vista and onwards have always been slightly blurry and clunky.

In the end they went with style over substance for the consumers.


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## fryshke (Mar 6, 2021)

Yes, and now we have normal crystal clear font rendering, and windows xp looks like garbage. It was fine in 2004, but that dude says windows xp rendering is superb in 2021. Which is completely true if you're using 720p or 1080p displays, because operating systems discarded this baggage in order to display fonts well on $ATLEAST_5_LAST_YEARS monitors.


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## kpedersen (Mar 6, 2021)

fryshke said:


> $ATLEAST_5_LAST_YEARS monitors.


Unfortunately in the industry hardware needs to last far longer than 5 years.

Plus, if you have ever used a server-class KVM Console, i.e:

https://www.startech.com/en-gb/server-management/rkcons1901

Notice the resolution to price ratio isn't great


----------



## fryshke (Mar 6, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> Unfortunately in the industry hardware needs to last far longer than 5 years.
> 
> Plus, if you have ever used a server-class KVM Console, i.e:
> 
> ...


Cool, I imagine the meeting where product managers were deciding font rendering:
- So, uh, guys, we'll obviously will make fonts look good for 99.999999999% users on day to day monitors, and not KVM console that amounts to 0.000000001% of usage, right?
- Duh...
- Yea no shit...
- ... yea?..
- Obviously...
- Why is this even a question?..

But sure, go ahead, put Windows XP in new POSes, ATMs, any other devices, because the font rendering looks good in our 50 cents  720p displays.


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## kpedersen (Mar 6, 2021)

fryshke said:


> - So, uh, guys, we'll obviously will make fonts look good for 99.999999999% users on day to day monitors, and not KVM console that amounts to 0.000000001% of usage, right?


Exactly. Like I said. Microsoft went the consumer route.

Servers rarely need beautifully rendered fonts and technical users can pretty much make it however they want.



fryshke said:


> But sure, go ahead, put Windows XP in new POSes, ATMs


It is quite funny because they do. Exactly this. Probably not for the fonts specifically. Mostly due to the crap unportable Win32 software.


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## fryshke (Mar 6, 2021)

No, you said "although the font rendering in Windows XP wasn't accurate, it was much preferred by users." - users preferred Windows XP rendering, not current "blurry" fonts.


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## kpedersen (Mar 6, 2021)

fryshke said:


> No, you said "although the font rendering in Windows XP wasn't accurate, it was much preferred by users." - users preferred Windows XP rendering, not current "blurry" fonts.


Yep, so it doesn't change the fact that a large number of users preferred the less accurate but clearer fonts. i.e:

https://social.technet.microsoft.co.../standard-font-smoothing?forum=w7itprogeneral


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 6, 2021)

I've got 123 different fonts I downloaded from some 1000 free font site to use with graphics/gimp.

I extract them as root directly into /usr/local/share/fonts using x11-fm/xfe and never edit them into Xorg where they should go, black sheep that I be. The file manager will freeze once in a while so I kill it and start back up. 

The fonts are readily available in Gimp and next time I open it and used one to make the "FreeBSD - The Daemons are no longer just in my head" wallpaper. 

Yours, yes yours, Free as in Free FreeBSD Wallpapers.


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## Deleted member 66267 (Mar 7, 2021)

fryshke said:


> Windows XP... font rendering... good? Are you still on 720p screen?


Don't know. My screen is an old HP LP2275w with the resolution 1680x1050.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 7, 2021)

Is this the thread where I can ask about getting my wife's Windows laptop configured?


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## Deleted member 66267 (Mar 7, 2021)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Is this the thread where I can ask about getting my wife's Windows laptop configured?


You are a bit too sensitive.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 7, 2021)

Barney said:


> Freebsd is great if you don't need to do anything, like build a touch application.


You can build a touch application in FreeBSD as easily as any other operating system. I haven't done one for FreeBSD but I have for another OS.
In fact, anything you can create on Linux or Windows you can build on FreeBSD, too. Probably easier, also.


----------



## zirias@ (Mar 7, 2021)

Hmm, then I wonder whether this little toy project of mine would work with "touch" on FreeBSD:








						GitHub - Zirias/bigfingers
					

Contribute to Zirias/bigfingers development by creating an account on GitHub.




					github.com
				




Seriously, I can't test, cause I don't have any device with a touch screen and FreeBSD installed on it. It DID work as expected on a Surface Book with Windows.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 7, 2021)

Zirias said:


> then I wonder whether this little toy project of mine would work with "touch" on FreeBSD


Of course it can. No need to question it.


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## zirias@ (Mar 7, 2021)

I'll have to trust you on that cause I really don't intend to buy anything with a touchscreen (except for a "smartphone" that probably won't ever run FreeBSD) myself


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## Snurg (Mar 8, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Hmm, then I wonder whether this little toy project of mine would work with "touch" on FreeBSD:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Wayland's libinput() is installed and active by default on FBSD 12.2+.
So you can do this with practically any HDMI+USB touchscreen monitor.
Just a different API than the Windows one.


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## zirias@ (Mar 8, 2021)

The latter is one reason why I avoid platform-specifc APIs whenever possible. This little toy code uses SDL to receive and process "touch events"


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## fryshke (Mar 8, 2021)

Anyways, I don't think FreeBSD has a future on the desktop or on the server. Every year it's becoming less supported and rarely do new things even bother remembering FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is becoming a framework, a scaffold. You wouldn't write your own OS, so you take framework - FreeBSD - and build upon it. Build software, drivers that support your product and release. Like Playstation 5, like Switch, like iOS, like macOS, etc.


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## jardows (Mar 8, 2021)

fryshke said:


> Anyways, I don't think FreeBSD has a future on the desktop or on the server. Every year it's becoming less supported and rarely do new things even bother remembering FreeBSD.
> 
> FreeBSD is becoming a framework, a scaffold. You wouldn't write your own OS, so you take framework - FreeBSD - and build upon it. Build software, drivers that support your product and release. Like Playstation 5, like Switch, like iOS, like macOS, etc.


It is time to be educated.  I recall recently with the Threadripper 3xxx series processors, Linux having a bear of a time with compatibility, not even booting without tweaks and patches, but FreeBSD worked without any issue or needing any additional configuration right out of the box.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3990x-freebsd-bsd&num=1

Don't listen to FUD or hype, look at reality.  FreeBSD "fell behind" in some areas, but has greatly caught up in most of those.  FreeBSD never "fell behind" in other areas and continues to be a premier choice for some applications.


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## richardtoohey2 (Mar 8, 2021)

fryshke said:


> Anyways, I don't think FreeBSD has a future on the desktop or on the server. Every year it's becoming less supported and rarely do new things even bother remembering FreeBSD.


I hope you are wrong, but time will tell.

FreeBSD works well for me (as does OpenBSD, and some Linux).

If you are right, I hope you agree that it's a sad/bad thing that our platform choices are getting more and more limited.  If you don't want Mac or Windows what are you going to be left with?  Linux only.  And then systemd.  OpenSSL.  Chrome.  I think the world will be a poorer place with less choice.  But I can appreciate it is becoming more and more difficult to support "everything" as an operating system provider - hardware and software - so you need more and more resource to keep up.  Just like web browsers - there is so much expected in them that is becoming almost impossible to keep up and we seem to be ending up with three - Chrome, Firefox and Safari.  And how much longer will Firefox survive?


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## Deleted member 66267 (Mar 9, 2021)

fryshke said:


> Anyways, I don't think FreeBSD has a future on the desktop or on the server. Every year it's becoming less supported and rarely do new things even bother remembering FreeBSD.


If you don't think it has any future why you are using it and why you are here? Or you are here only to rant and actually not using it? Why don't just go with Linux since it's the ultimate operating system?


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## CuatroTorres (Mar 9, 2021)

Philosophy will ruin your lives: If you need more than one reason to do something, you probably shouldn't. Great strength requires great control.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 9, 2021)

also-ran said:


> If you don't think it has any future why you are using it and why you are here? Or you are here only to rant and actually not using it? Why don't just go with Linux since it's the ultimate operating system?



I know who he is. I looked back in his posting history.

In Feb. 2019 I was at DistroWatch and some Gentoo penguin squealing in Ecstatic Display, gawked an erroneous statement regarding Firefox built from ports that ended with "been there, done that, got the T-shirt" in reference to his expertise with ports in a ritualistic display to declare ownership of the area typical of the species.

I replied in a post titled "Clothes don't make the man" that if he knew as much about ports as his T-shirt led him to believe he would know all the dependencies were built first and Firefox was last in the build.

The next day fryshke and his penguin pal ekingston followed me here. To test through trial their tater tot troll two-timing teamwork thought trailer trash terrifyingly tough thereby thoroughly tasking The Talker.

Then the titanium-tongue terror Trihexagonal towered tall, treacherously throwing thunderous temporal torrents tastelessly toward two timid tuxies too tired to tango thus turning them to tears, triumphantly taking the tenure that turgid Titan to Tautology tenaciously took to totality.

I will have to give fryshke some credit though. He's the one who gave me the idea of a new way to play this game, which I have since refined and used recently:



> fryshke said:
> You have mental problems.



Please detail them for me, I'd be most interested in hearing your opinion on my mental state.

And, please, be brutally honest...


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## kpedersen (Mar 9, 2021)

fryshke said:


> FreeBSD is becoming a framework, a scaffold. You wouldn't write your own OS, so you take framework - FreeBSD - and build upon it. Build software, drivers that support your product and release. Like Playstation 5, like Switch, like iOS, like macOS, etc.



... so you are saying FreeBSD does have a future then?

This seems very similar to how it is now to be fair. You install the base OS (you call this a "framework") and then add desktop stuff built from ports, including drm-kmod/nvidia drivers (you call this "Build software, drivers").

Only the PS5 (and 3,4) uses the FreeBSD OS (i.e CellOS, OrbisOS, etc) . The other examples use only small parts of it (along with GNU components). The Switch apparently uses the same OS as the DS (a much smaller custom OS).

macOS only has remnants of BSD as part of its network layer and BSD subsystem. It is almost like saying that Windows runs on Linux because WSL exists. Or Windows runs on FreeBSD because Winsock is based on Berkeley sockets. It also has more of a GNU userland these days. For example it has Vim, Screen and until recently it used Bash as default too.

I do almost agree with you though. A decent OS will never be suitable as a user-friendly consumer desktop. FreeBSD has very little future in this space because doing so would ruin it. Where our opinions differ is that I believe all open-source consumer centric operating systems will regress to the point of unusability. Making FreeBSD competitive by default. With a recent influx of Linux escapees, we are already starting to see symptoms of this.


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## fryshke (Mar 9, 2021)

It's easy - conspiracy theories. Like, I was on DistroWatch (I was not) and I... *followed*... you here (I did not) and actually teamed up with someone? Fruitcake now, fruitcake then, noticed and said now, noticed and said then. Easy peasy. )

Edit: Holy shit, even called you paranoid back then - https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/the-tragedy-of-systemd.69621/page-2#post-417990

Hehehehe. Being egoistic is another problem - you think others care about your conspiracies. I posted that and forgot about you after 5 minutes. I did not think about you for 2 years, like, come on, be realistic. You're commenting, I'm responding, that's about it, I don't track random people on the internet, I really don't care, it's just how forums work - someone comments, someone responds, deal with it, or use thicker tinfoil hat. 


also-ran said:


> If you don't think it has any future why you are using it and why you are here? Or you are here only to rant and actually not using it? Why don't just go with Linux since it's the ultimate operating system?


Because hope dies last. I don't want to use Linux. Linux is crazy, FreeBSD is sane. I'd gladly use FreeBSD on servers, but - Docker. It's here. It's quite good. Everyone's using it. I like it. FreeBSD - left behind. .NET - I love it. We have zero issues deploying our .NET software for a couple of years now on Linux. FreeBSD - left behind. On desktop - no Visual Studio Code, no jetbrains IDE support, no Davinci Resolve. Yea, some software might work at the mercy of Linux compatibility. Might break later. I want stable OS, not emulation crap, and if it's running on Linux compatibility anyways - just use Linux and have a calm state of mind that your tools will not break, because Linux compatibility does not ensure 100% Linux software will work. ZFS - like, one of the killer FreeBSD features, also moved primarily to Linux, oof, because, again, not enough people care about FreeBSD.

And that makes me sad. That doesn't make me idealistic and go "ooooh freebsd is the best", it makes me go "freebsd is irrelevant. af". And I express my grief here. But others are in denial, or just simple minded "well everything *I* need works".


jardows said:


> It is time to be educated.  I recall recently with the Threadripper 3xxx series processors, Linux having a bear of a time with compatibility, not even booting without tweaks and patches, but FreeBSD worked without any issue or needing any additional configuration right out of the box.
> 
> https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=3990x-freebsd-bsd&num=1
> 
> Don't listen to FUD or hype, look at reality.  FreeBSD "fell behind" in some areas, but has greatly caught up in most of those.  FreeBSD never "fell behind" in other areas and continues to be a premier choice for some applications.


It's time to get educated - ARM is here, every user and tech journalist fucking loves ARM - https://macdailynews.com/2020/12/04/ars-technica-apples-m1-macbook-air-is-hilariously-fast/ it's super efficient with crazy battery life, it's crazy fast (for 4 core cpu). Linux - already working on apple M1 distro and can boot and run. FreeBSD - ARM is tier 2 support. Nice. x86 on desktops is dead to me, I'm not spending any more money on x86, ARM is so much better now than x86, FreeBSD, again - ARM is tier 2.


richardtoohey2 said:


> If you are right, I hope you agree that it's a sad/bad thing that our platform choices are getting more and more limited.


It is sad. In ideal world - I'd like more choice. But can our one planet support four desktop OSes - Windows, macOS, Linux and FreeBSD? It can barely support three.


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## matt_k (Mar 9, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> I do almost agree with you though. A decent OS will never be suitable as a user-friendly consumer desktop. FreeBSD has very little future in this space because doing so would ruin it. Where our opinions differ is that I believe all open-source consumer centric operating systems will regress to the point of unusability. Making FreeBSD competitive by default. With a recent influx of Linux escapees, we are already starting to see symptoms of this.


exactly what I said in some similar thread here some time ago. It was like "why is FreeBSD so user unfriendly". What are you talking about. FreeBSD is user friendly by being simple, well-documented and well-behaved. Can't get any more user friendly than that. If some people are looking for point-and-click bloatwareOS, then there is *buntu, look no further, it works and it is exactly what you need. For god's sake, don't try to bend FreeBSD to this type of mindset, there is enough *buntu clones already.

What I don't get is, why do we keep having these same types of forum posts over and over again? The sticky should be enough


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## Snurg (Mar 9, 2021)

fryshke said:


> FreeBSD is becoming a framework


It was always, and that is the reason why it can be used so universally.
This makes it so competitive, without actually trying to "compete".



kpedersen said:


> I believe all open-source consumer centric operating systems will regress to the point of unusability. Making FreeBSD competitive by default. With a recent influx of Linux escapees, we are already starting to see symptoms of this.


The more constricted and bloated a system becomes, the less freedom it leaves to its users.
A vicious cycle.
Users demand more bloat, and then they suddenly decide that it got too much bloat and demand an overhaul.
So, new distros appear and older ones disappear.

Not worth participating in this game of losing.


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## fryshke (Mar 9, 2021)

Snurg said:


> It was always, and that is the reason why it can be used so universally.
> This makes it so competitive, without actually trying to "compete".


Yes, competitive as a framework OS. And it's winning here over Linux. But not because of technical superiority, but because of license, let's be real. That's the only reason. Topic was about "desktop os" - and here freebsd is losing hard.


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## kpedersen (Mar 9, 2021)

fryshke said:


> Topic was about "desktop os" - and here freebsd is losing hard.


Absolutely, and Linux is also losing.

And yet, we can hardly say that macOS or Windows are suitable. Part of a desktop OS involves privacy and they can simply not comply with that requirement. They are also both propritary so are instantly out of the running for open-source desktops.

So the next best are Linux and FreeBSD. They are basically 1% apart in terms of "desktop superiority". Pick whichever has the coolest wallpaper. Honestly at this point, we are so far at the bottom of the bucket that you could probably justify "dirt on a stick" as a competitive desktop.

My advice to anyone hung up on "desktops" is make do without, get on with your life (and projects). There is *much* more to computing than fancy buttons and pictures.


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## jardows (Mar 9, 2021)

fryshke said:


> Yes, competitive as a framework OS. And it's winning here over Linux. But not because of technical superiority, but because of license, let's be real. That's the only reason. Topic was about "desktop os" - and here freebsd is losing hard.


Again with they hyperbole and FUD.  What do you mean by "losing hard?"  Do you mean market share?  Because if that's your metric, nothing is going to "win" unless it comes out of Redmond.  At its best MacOS can only manage about 9% market share of desktop computing.  You mentioned Linux trying to get to boot on an M1 - I imagine less than 1% - probably closer to less than .1% of the Apple computers with an M1 processor will ever end up with anything other than MacOS - maybe when the original M1 is EOL and cannot get MacOS updates anymore, you might see a few more people trying to tinker with the old hardware.  I mean, did you see the big announcement the other day that the Linux kernel now finally supports installation on the Nintendo 64?  Hurry up FreeBSD developers - gotta catch up to Linux here!

You are asking the wrong questions and looking at things from the wrong perspective, and the spreading FUD based on this.  You should not look at FreeBSD and ask the question - "can this OS gain mass adoption among the computer simpletons (It's the year of the 'FreeBSD Desktop' finally!)?"  Because that will never happen.  It won't happen with any 'BSD, Solaris, Linux distro, Haiku, RedOx, ReactOS, you name it.   The question should be - "Can I use FreeBSD as a Desktop computer Operating System without significant trouble, and will it continue to grow in its support and development?"  The answer to that is YES!  YES!  A thousand times YES!

I _like_ FreeBSD as both a server operating system and a desktop operating system. Is it always the best tool for the job? No. Does it work for the vast majority of my personal use cases? Yes. Am I willing to put in some of the work to build an operating system environment that is a pleasure for me to use, not just the same boring thing? Yep, sure am.

As I see it, there are only two things that would make FreeBSD "better" for Desktop usage - 1. Improved hardware compatibility, 2. Increased application support.  Neither of these are a fault of the FreeBSD operating system, and even at this, these areas are not so far behind as one might think.  These areas will not improve by some radical shift in thinking of the core team, or a new direction for the project, they simply require more people willing to work on it.  I have seen numerous times where hardware support or application porting happened in a relatively short period of time by only one or two talented programmers taking the time to do it.  

By focusing on what FreeBSD does well (not necessarily the best, but well, and there are lots of areas we can point to), we can get more people educated and interested in the project, meaning more people that may be willing to help in driver or application compatibility.


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## zirias@ (Mar 9, 2021)

I don't care for all that jabbering. Typical "Desktop" WILL become a niche for sure, no matter which OS, maybe needed in some offices, probably needed by software devs. Given that, I need it, and to me personally, FreeBSD is the *perfect* dektop OS. It really depends on your expectations, mine isn't having all sorts of bells and whistles OOTB but a simple, clean and logical design leaving me in control.


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## Snurg (Mar 9, 2021)

jardows said:


> As I see it, there are only two things that would make FreeBSD "better" for Desktop usage - 1. Improved hardware compatibility, 2. Increased application support.


Both 1. and 2. are good.
I guess what people are actually complaining about is the "CLI firewall" that keeps ubuntized (*) people out.
Probably not a bad thing.



jardows said:


> By focusing on what FreeBSD does well ( ... there are lots of areas we can point to), we can get more people educated and interested in the project, meaning more people that may be willing to help ...


+1


(*) The GUI fancy is often called "Klickibunti" in German. Hard to translate, it derogatorily says about "colorful things to click around". This is what I think when I hear/read "Ubuntu". Imho we don't need more KlickibuntiBSDs. Why don't the Klickibunti people just go to GhostBSD?


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## CuatroTorres (Mar 9, 2021)

I risk guessing that the initial thread question is the result of the fear of wasting time and effort in learning a system that was not desktop-oriented, with the underlying technical limitations it entails supported by all the FUD around, and that it's more of a personal choice of a new user who dropped around here.

It's a legitimate question without a right answer, so it gets so many looks. Life is full of daily micro-choices, accepting it and moving on. There is no technical aspect that resolves the issue except your use case. The survival of the desktop project will be fixed by the users and the commercial push around. Time will tell.

Don't take it seriously and enjoy it. —Jeff Bridges' wife


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## zirias@ (Mar 9, 2021)

CuatroTorres said:


> I risk guessing that the initial thread question is the result of the fear of wasting time and effort in learning a system that was not desktop-oriented, with the underlying technical limitations it entails supported by all the FUD around, and that it's more of a personal choice of a new user who dropped around here.


Then what MUST be made clear is that FreeBSD, although not particularly "desktop-oriented", isn't (only) focused on servers either. It might have been in the past (?), but mission statement clearly is a "general purpose" OS nowadays, which is already reflected in the very first sentence on the project website:


> FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 9, 2021)

Where did I read that Intel recently enhanced/increased their support for FreeBSD, concerning just about everything from CPU, GPU to LAN & WLAN network drivers?  It was here on this forum, couldn't find it again.  Or was it in vermaden's weekly RSS feed, also posted here in _Feedback_ IIRC?  Well, if FreeBSD is sentenced to death, then why would they do that?  Besides that I'd like to know about the plan B of those companies that build their products upon FreeBSD.
    You know my mantra: the _yea free BeaSD_ makes up for a very sound, secure & performant foundation of a modern desktop system (usable for ordinary non-_techies_).  It's just that a (large?) team has to assemble the missing links & plug them together.  It boils down to manpower & organisation.


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## zirias@ (Mar 9, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> You know my mantra: the _yea free BeaSD_ makes up for a very sound, secure & performant foundation of a modern desktop system (usable for ordinary non-_techies_). It's just that a (large?) team has to assemble the missing links & plug them together.


What I also meant with expectations above: I probably wouldn't want to use that.

It's not rocket science to install and configure software you'd want for your desktop, and whatever you might want to tweak in the base system isn't too much either. I'm totally willing to do that (it can be done quickly) to get the result I want: A clean, well-structured system, one that I know and understand (at least on a "building blocks" level) and can easily manage, maintain and fix any problem.

Back in the days, when the ecosystem around Linux was still somewhat sane (not talking about the missing defined base system of course, but the times before ALSA, pulseaudio, systemd, you name it...), you could get something remotely similar with e.g. Debian.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 9, 2021)

...and 20 years later...(thread continues below. Different trolls. Same useless comments.)


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 10, 2021)

matt_k said:


> exactly what I said in some similar thread here some time ago. It was like "why is FreeBSD so user unfriendly". What are you talking about. FreeBSD is user friendly by being simple, well-documented and well-behaved. Can't get any more user friendly than that. If some people are looking for point-and-click bloatwareOS, then there is *buntu, look no further, it works and it is exactly what you need. For god's sake, don't try to bend FreeBSD to this type of mindset, there is enough *buntu clones already.



You make good points.

It can't be that "user unfriendly" if I could teach myself to use it without looking at the Handbook.

Not having done that, I've noticed over time I ended up doing quite a few things in a way other people do differently that seems a lot more complicated than the way I learned to make it work for me. That being most recent in memory.

And it works very well for me. I don't want to see anything changed in the base system and please continue to allow me to choose what programs I install from that point on.


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 10, 2021)

Ooh! Oooh! I know!! Just like the thread about introducing yourself, let's keep this thread for all the trolls to feed their line of BS! It will keep their garbage out of the useful posts! Problem solved!


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## Snurg (Mar 10, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> You make good points.
> 
> it can't be that "user unfriendly" if I could teach myself to use it without looking at the Handbook.


Well, my impression is that _it was actually the existence of PC-BSD and its quick and easy installation, which made you recognize what qualities FreeBSD has to offer._

I have to admit that I often used PC-BSD when I had to set up another computer.
Just because _its installer saved me a few hours of doing the boring steps between bsdinstall and an usable desktop system_.

And this is one of the reasons why I work on something similar, which can save me (and maybe others) this chore.
I have to admit that one of my motivations to make it easy to get set up an usable system quickly is make people say "ohhh FreeBSD is different, it is unique, I want to use _this_ because nothing else offers me such great things!".


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 10, 2021)

Snurg said:


> Well, my impression is that _it was actually the existence of PC-BSD and its quick and easy installation, which made you recognize what qualities FreeBSD has to offer._



I already knew I wanted to use FreeBSD but the installer looked beyond my skillset at the time and inconceivable an itty-bitty incubus dare invoke it.

I was browsing Live CD's available for different Operating Systems when I first saw PC-BSD among the Linux discos listed. That came with KDE3 installed and all I needed was to get to the desktop. 

I joined the PC-BSD forums as Weixiong in June 2005 and the rest is Black Sheep Sorcery.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 10, 2021)

YMMD (once again) ROTFLMAO


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## mickey (Mar 10, 2021)

jardows said:


> As I see it, there are only two things that would make FreeBSD "better" for Desktop usage - 1. Improved hardware compatibility, 2. Increased application support. Neither of these are a fault of the FreeBSD operating system


As for 1 this is not entirely true, as I just had to experience myself. Trying to overcome the "no WiFi" situation on a friend's notebook (due to unsupported builtin QCA9377 WiFi module) after having spent a great deal of time into researching what should be supported, she ordered an ASUS USB-N10 Nano WiFi adapter that supposedly had a RTL8188CUS chipset, supported by FreeBSD's rtwn_usb(4) driver. When that thing arrived, FreeBSD would not assign the driver to it, because - suprise, surprise - that thing is Rev. B1 of the device that uses an RTL8188EUS chipset instead. Not that this should generally be a showstopper, as RTL8188EUS should be supported as well, but finding out that there is a hardcoded list of USB vendor/product IDs that does simply not include this specific device's ID really made my day. Saying WiFi support in FreeBSD leaves things to be desired would be an understatement.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 10, 2021)

mickey said:


> [...] that thing is Rev. B1 of the device that uses an RTL8188EUS chipset instead. Not that this should generally be a showstopper, as RTL8188EUS should be supported as well, but finding out that there is a hardcoded list of USB vendor/product IDs that does simply not include this specific device's ID really made my day. Saying WiFi support in FreeBSD leaves things to be desired would be an understatement.


1. Did you research if that chipset is supported in _stable_ or 13-beta?
2. It's open source.  Unless that chipset needs special instrumentation & initialization, you can easily add that device ID to the list & build the module from source.  Did you send a patch or the missing device ID to FreeBSD's bugzilla, to help to improve this unsatisfying situation?


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## Snurg (Mar 10, 2021)

Realtek is a low-quality nuisance to avoid if possible, even worse than ATI.

Their chips need firmware updates to work.
There are many different series that are not or not easily discernible from naming/numbering scheme.
Even worse, completely different chips share the same PCI ID.
Just using the driver disk that came with your device is no solution here, of course.

So, to support particular Realtek chips, every chip has to be verified to work with a particular driver, and for new chips the firmware also needs to be extracted from the Windows drivers.

If you could determine a driver work with that chip after its PCI ID/sub ID has been added to the driver's list, it would be extremely helpful if you could post a PR with the necessary data so the maintainers can update the FreeBSD driver.
Your feedback would help others much.

P.S.
Sadly it is difficult to officially warn against particular hardware manufacturers.
But imho this is necessary, as it is not worth supporting low-quality low-performance hardware.
This only fires back.


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## kpedersen (Mar 10, 2021)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Ooh! Oooh! I know!! Just like the thread about introducing yourself, let's keep this thread for all the trolls to feed their line of BS! It will keep their garbage out of the useful posts! Problem solved!


Heh, perhaps not a bad idea.

This topic comes up enough that it is worthwhile having a thread we can just merge it all in with. Safer than deleting in case there is ~1% useful content.

But this same topic comes up so often that it is far too much pressure on the mods. Maybe we need a mod employed specifically for this *one* purpose of quelling the "Desktop FreeBSD topic".

I would offer my services but I believe I am too biased (and argumentative) to do an appropriate job. I sometimes just can't help myself but get involved. Especially when we get a feisty one. I am trying to improve here, but... babysteps


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## Beastie7 (Mar 10, 2021)

I honestly don't see a problem with FreeBSD shipping an openbox-like wayland compositor. App support notwithstanding; it could give us a base display system we can all use and make our own. Openbox doesn't really assume anything; its just a blank screen which is great. An extension API would be needed though; for panels, menu bars, etc.


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## Snurg (Mar 10, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> I honestly don't see a problem with FreeBSD shipping a ... wayland compositor.


Wayland... This is an interesting and dangerous topic.

I don't have anything against wayland, as long as it remains optional, so users are left the choice whether they want it or not.
A few years ago there was a discussion on the freebsd mailing list after the announcement of the introduction of libinput into FreeBSD 12.2.

I warned to keep this optional, as libinput does not fully support, actually breaks a lot of functionality regarding mice wheels.
This issue has become a long-running problem on all Linux distros since their introduction of libinput, and also on FreeBSD (and also this forums) since.

The bad thing with libinput now is, that the libinput developers implemented it in a way that makes it permanent, no matter whether you manually configure xorg to use evdev.
At least on Linux, it is being placed between the hardware and the xorg event stuff, so the only way to remove it is to modify the sources.
This ensures maximum difficulties for users wanting to remove it.

Personally I guess there are strong pro-Wayland forces in the FreeBSD core team, as my request to include libinput in a way that it can easily be removed, for example by build flags, resulted me in getting moderated on the mailing list.


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## 6502 (Mar 10, 2021)

Snurg said:


> Realtek is a low-quality nuisance to avoid if possible, even worse than ATI.



They can be low-quality but are widely used and it is better to have support/driver in FreeBSD. The integrated NIC in many motherboards is RTL.


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## Beastie7 (Mar 10, 2021)

Snurg said:


> Wayland... This is an interesting and dangerous topic.



Major app providers are starting to provide backend support Wayland. We don't really have a choice if we want to remain relevant. I think the protocol is incomplete, but it does solve vital UX problems. When Nvidia (!), OBS, KDE, Mozilla, and the likes are starting to tip-toe into that world; that's a sign we should follow suit.


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## mickey (Mar 10, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> 1. Did you research if that chipset is supported in _stable_ or 13-beta?
> 2. It's open source.  Unless that chipset needs special instrumentation & initialization, you can easily add that device ID to the list & build the module from source.  Did you send a patch or the missing device ID to FreeBSD's bugzilla, to help to improve this unsatisfying situation?


1) No, it's for a friend's notebook who just wants to use that thing (without cable), and going for stable or 13-beta is just not a viable option.
2) As soon as I get positive feedback from her, that the modified kernel module works, I will create a PR for sure, or most likely.


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## Snurg (Mar 10, 2021)

6502 said:


> They can be low-quality but are widely used and it is better to have support/driver in FreeBSD. The integrated NIC in many motherboards is RTL.


True... I was ranting because of my experiences (shame on me). What I am thinking of is how good it would be if there were more quality-awareness, for example that the users know that they should not expect skyrocket performance from Realtek devices.



Beastie7 said:


> Major app providers are starting to provide backend support Wayland. We don't really have a choice if we want to remain relevant. I think the protocol is incomplete, but it does solve vital UX problems. When Nvidia (!), OBS, KDE, Mozilla, and the likes are starting to tip-toe into that world; that's a sign we should follow suit.


True, too!
What I wish however, is that users who do not need it (yet) have sort of easy way to opt out, to avoid being affected by the "Wayland childhood issues".


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## kpedersen (Mar 10, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> Major app providers are starting to provide backend support Wayland. We don't really have a choice if we want to remain relevant.


I am assuming that neither Windows or macOS is focusing on Wayland and yet both of these guys are going to remain relevant. So I am not convinced that relevance is related to supporting a Linux centric display system.


----------



## Beastie7 (Mar 10, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> I am assuming that neither Windows or macOS is focusing on Wayland and yet both of these guys are going to remain relevant. So I am not convinced that relevance is related to supporting a Linux centric display system.



Open Source desktop upstream is Linux. Our relevance is tied to it. Unless, like I’ve stated before, we have our own full graphics/toolkit stack we have no other choice. As crappy as it sounds, they currently decide our destiny on the desktop.


----------



## Mjölnir (Mar 10, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> I am assuming that neither Windows or macOS is focusing on Wayland and yet both of these guys are going to remain relevant. So I am not convinced that relevance is related to supporting a Linux centric display system.


IIUC Android is Linux.  ChromeOS, too?  I thought it is.  Look @ their market share & more importantly: it's growth.  Look at the trends, not at the status quo.  Which display system does this new GiggleOS & FirefoxOS use?  What do them Game-boxes use?  These boxes are sold in high numbers.  As are consumer tablets & laptops & smartTVs.  My settop box (cable <-> TV & radio) runs Linux inside, sadly so.


----------



## zirias@ (Mar 10, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> Open Source desktop upstream is Linux.


Open Source desktop upstream is the projects actually building Open Source desktops (e.g. KDE) or even "just" window managers as well as display solutions (e.g. X.Org).



Beastie7 said:


> Unless, like I’ve stated before, we have our own full graphics/toolkit stack


X.Org is still alive and works on many systems (even including Windows). It might have its drawbacks, but there is NO pressing need to come up with something new. I don't think anyone would oppose something new if it is really better for important usecases AND written in a sane, portable way.


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## Beastie7 (Mar 10, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Open Source desktop upstream is the projects actually building Open Source desktops (e.g. KDE) or even "just" window managers as well as display solutions (e.g. X.Org).
> 
> 
> X.Org is still alive and works on many systems (even including Windows). It might have its drawbacks, but there is NO pressing need to come up with something new. I don't think anyone would oppose something new if it is really better for important usecases AND written in a sane, portable way.



You guys aren't understanding what I'm saying here. Linux-centric maintainers, community boards, and developers target Linux *first*, not Linux *and* FreeBSD. Once they abandon X.org; who's going to maintain it? The FreeBSD committers? Us? I highly doubt that. Either we follow or we make our own solutions; thus our own ecosystem.


----------



## zirias@ (Mar 10, 2021)

While some projects might think "Linux is the world", others still understand diversity and open standards, valuing portability. See for example https://freebsd.kde.org/


----------



## kpedersen (Mar 10, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> You guys aren't understanding what I'm saying here. Linux-centric maintainers, community boards, and developers target Linux *first*, not Linux *and* FreeBSD. Once they abandon X.org; who's going to maintain it? The FreeBSD committers? Us? I highly doubt that. Either we follow or we make our own solutions; thus our own ecosystem.


I understand your concern. However I can just as likely see us sticking with X11 and waiting for Wayland to get replaced. Xorg has also demonstrated that it doesn't need much maintenance. After all, many Wayland fans have been stating that it hasn't been maintained for over 5 years. A few more (decades) won't hurt.

Especially now that drivers are now more tightly bound to the kernel rather than Xorg, we already have our modesetting driver.

We will replace X11 one day. I honestly don't think it will be Wayland however. I don't even really dislike Wayland. It is simple and stupid (in a good way). It just doesn't really solve enough. We will have an abstraction layer soon enough once Wayland matures.



Mjölnir said:


> IIUC Android is Linux.  ChromeOS, too?  I thought it is.  Look @ their market share & more importantly: it's growth.  Look at the trends, not at the status quo.  Which display system does this new GiggleOS & FirefoxOS use?  What do them Game-boxes use?  These boxes are sold in high numbers.  As are consumer tablets & laptops & smartTVs.  My settop box (cable <-> TV & radio) runs Linux inside, sadly so.



I think this is quite a useful example. Wayland was made to improve set top boxes and the embedded world. Skipping some of the more complex network awareness and other layers. And then Android still doesn't use Wayland. In some ways I would see FreeBSD consider Android's SurfaceFlinger display system instead of Wayland. Especially if it went primarily with popularity. Both are open-source, SurfaceFlinger is far more mature and commonly used.


----------



## Beastie7 (Mar 10, 2021)

Zirias said:


> While some projects might think "Linux is the world", others still understand diversity and open standards, valuing portability. See for example https://freebsd.kde.org/



KDE is one of very few exceptions.



kpedersen said:


> I understand your concern. However I can just as likely see us sticking with X11 and waiting for Wayland to get replaced. Xorg has also demonstrated that it doesn't need much maintenance. After all, many Wayland fans have been stating that it hasn't been maintained for over 5 years. A few more (decades) won't hurt.
> 
> Especially now that drivers are now more tightly bound to the kernel rather than Xorg, we already have our modesetting driver.
> 
> We will replace X11 one day. I honestly don't think it will be Wayland however. I don't even really dislike Wayland. It is simple and stupid (in a good way). It just doesn't really solve enough. We will have an abstraction layer soon enough once Wayland matures.



I guess we can always throw a new user into the sharks and tell them to follow vermadens desktop guide. I'm sure that'll keep us relevant.


----------



## zirias@ (Mar 10, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> I honestly don't think it will be Wayland however. I don't even really dislike Wayland. It is simple and stupid (in a good way). It just doesn't really solve enough.


This is btw a summary I wouldn't have expected in THIS thread. Just because it really makes sense. The basic idea of wayland makes a lot of sense, because X indeed has a myriad of features nobody wants/needs any more, while still lacking features that would be important (e.g. a solid and secure solution for "locking" a display session).

I don't know exactly what the pain points with Wayland on FreeBSD are. All I say is there is no pressing need to abandon X.Org right now.


----------



## kpedersen (Mar 10, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> KDE is one of very few exceptions.


Out of the 3 main desktop environments people use, KDE represents a fair chunk. Plus Gnome was invented to be a GNU/Linux or GNU/Hurd desktop "*GNU* Network *Object* Model Environment" (originally). They don't represent the only free desktops around. Only desktops that have tied themselves down to Gtk really have an issue.



Beastie7 said:


> I guess we can always throw a new user into the sharks and tell them to follow vermadens desktop guide. I'm sure that'll keep us relevant.


So long as FreeBSD has developers (not necessarily users), it will remain relevant. Compared to your average Linux distro (Arch Linux has <30 developers), FreeBSD is doing much better.

It is a bit of a warped view I know, but as for the desktop, even Linux is irrelevant. That doesn't really have any impact on being able to make good use of it does it?


----------



## kpedersen (Mar 10, 2021)

Zirias said:


> I don't know exactly what the pain points with Wayland on FreeBSD are. All I say is there is no pressing need to abandon X.Org right now.


I think we already have it in ports and working. I don't think it was a particularly hard port either.

Just like on Linux, 98% of users stick to X11. The other 2% are Gnome 3 users who left it to default to Wayland 

Edit:
Yes, here it is.





						[ports] Index of /head/graphics/wayland
					






					svnweb.freebsd.org
				




With Wayland the real issue is the terrible incomplete compositors that need to do far too much than an individual can maintain themselves (X11 window managers are just about possible). However we do actually have sway in ports too (IMO Wayland is basically Gnome or Sway until it matures):





						[ports] Index of /head/x11-wm/sway
					






					svnweb.freebsd.org


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## sidetone (Mar 10, 2021)

I wish they would keep Xorg, and only replace parts of it with the best components of Wayland. Then keep it portable and simple enough where simple traditional window managers, and XCB and Xlib applications can still be used, perhaps through a layer or parts of Xorg itself. I don't think Wayland should fully replace Xorg parts that allow traditional programs and window managers to work. For the vast majority of programs, including window managers, not being able to use them anymore because of a switch to Wayland doesn't make sense.

Parts of anything, including Wayland, that have parts of Gnome added to it, become messed up and stay that way. Influence by Gnome will mess up anything and make it into a perpetual dependency-hell pile of bloat. I wish they would keep that separate.

KDE and XFCE components aren't like that, but should also remain separate with their own separate implementations on Wayland.


When something like Xorg no longer needs updates, I only wish to verify periodically that it doesn't need updates and is still maintained or audited from vulnerabilities.


Here's a good article that shows how XCB (X-protocol C-language binding library) is a compatible improvement (or partial to full replacement) over Xlib: https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1395423. According to this as of 2009, the downside of XCB was lack of documentation and obsolete documentation.


----------



## sidetone (Mar 10, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> Linux-centric maintainers, community boards, and developers target Linux *first*, not Linux *and* FreeBSD. Once they abandon X.org; who's going to maintain it? The FreeBSD committers? Us? I highly doubt that. Either we follow or we make our own solutions; thus our own ecosystem.


The best way to have an ecosystem, is to have a loose commonality ecosystem within different BSD's (FreeBSD, DragonflyBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD). Spread out maintenance throughout similar operating systems that have a keep it simple ideology. Especially for hardware drivers and display servers.


----------



## Beastie7 (Mar 10, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> It is a bit of a warped view I know, but as for the desktop, even Linux is irrelevant. That doesn't really have any impact on being able to make good use of it does it?



Linux is treated as _the_ open source desktop. It doesn't bode well for alternatives. It's actually pretty damn stressful for someone who's trying to get rid of macOS entirely.



sidetone said:


> The best way to have an ecosystem, is to have a loose commonality ecosystem within different BSD's (FreeBSD, DragonflyBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD). Spread out maintenance throughout similar operating systems that have a keep it simple ideology. Especially for hardware drivers and display servers.



Ideally, but a mere pipe dream. Mainly because Wayland is so damn incomplete you have to write a lot of OS-specific code for even basic display services. Like display enumeration, screen recording, locking, etc. NetBSD doesn't have support for libinput too I believe either.

I have to hand it to the OpenBSD folks for deciding to run their own stew of X.org; that is their parachute. That's not a bad idea either for FreeBSD.


----------



## sidetone (Mar 10, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> I have to hand it to the OpenBSD folks for deciding to run their own stew of X.org; that is their parachute. That's not a bad idea either for FreeBSD.


Is OpenBSD's Xenocara too locked down to be of use as an Xorg implementation on FreeBSD? I know you weren't saying Xenocara specifically, but as in to use that as an example. When the old Xorg stops being used by the Linux community, that can simply be taken over.

Xorg is required to have standards that include obsolete hardware. Xenocara sticks by same standards as Xorg. The only thing I would like to see is a layer that replaces Xorg's utilities required for obsolete hardware, or simple generic drivers for old hardware.


Xorg is actually pretty good. Recently the session manager on my computer has been broken, and I don't know if that's from my own set up, or if it's from recent adjustments to Xorg and XDM itself.


----------



## a6h (Mar 11, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> I have to hand it to the OpenBSD folks for deciding to run their own stew of X.org; that is their parachute. That's not a bad idea either for FreeBSD.


That's the main reason, once in while we hear that OpenBSD has better desktop support. Let's imagine you're a neophyte:
(Note: I'm not for desktop or against desktop. Also It's not my concern whether FreeBSD is suitable for random Joe or not)

You go to the OpenBSD site, download the biggest image, and when you're installing, you tick every single options. When
you reboot the system you will find yourself in a GUI environments. Now from a neophyte point of view you have desktop.

Same neophyte comes to the FreeBSD website, again download the biggest image, start to install, and check every boxes.
He reboots the system and will drop in CLI environment. Then he comes to the Forums, opens a threat, so forth and so on.

From neophyte perspective, i.e. download the largest ISO and tick everything, OpenBSD is better for desktop than FreeBSD.
That's the idea of desktop support from his perspective. It's not about driver and supporting hardware, nor supplying ports.


----------



## richardtoohey2 (Mar 11, 2021)

vigole said:


> Then he comes to the Forums, opens a threat, so forth and so on.


Yes, it's getting quite vicious around here


----------



## a6h (Mar 11, 2021)

*Final note:*
We can come here, talking about desktop all-day. But here's the most important point, which is missing from this thread, and every single similar threads.
If you want _*The FreeBSD - Desktop Edition*_, you have to pick the proper communication channel. i.e. talk to these fellas at FreeBSD Project and Foundation:

*Core Team*








						FreeBSD Project Administration and Management
					

FreeBSD is an operating system used to power modern servers, desktops, and embedded platforms.




					www.freebsd.org
				




*Board of Directors*





						Board of Directors | FreeBSD Foundation
					

Board of DirectorsThe Foundation board is comprised of volunteers that are actively involved in FreeBSD and are respected researchers in their areas of professional expertise. President, Treasurer, and Founder Justin T. Gibbs Justin is a Software Engineer at Facebook. His past experience has...




					freebsdfoundation.org
				




*Staff*





						Staff | FreeBSD Foundation
					

Staff Executive & Operations Executive Director Deb Goodkin Deb has been with the foundation since August, 2005. She has spent 20+ years working in marketing, sales, and development of data storage devices. She earned an MSEE from the University of Santa Clara, and a BSCE from the University of...




					freebsdfoundation.org


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## Beastie7 (Mar 11, 2021)

vigole said:


> *Final note:*
> We can come here, talking about desktop all-day. But here's the most important point, which is missing from this thread, and every single similar threads.
> If you want _*The FreeBSD - Desktop Edition*_, you have to pick the proper communication channel. i.e. talk to these fellas at FreeBSD Project and Foundation:
> 
> ...



I wonder if the DRM work is complete/stable. I read an article Ed Maste wanted to give WiFi drivers the same treatment. Hopefully people will actually do the work; it’s honestly embarrassing. Given this is a professional, research driven operating system.


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## Beastie7 (Mar 11, 2021)

sidetone said:


> Is OpenBSD's Xenocara too locked down to be of use as an Xorg implementation on FreeBSD?



It's a build framework, so it adheres to strict policies that OpenBSD expects of their operation system. But FreeBSD doesn't have to take the same approach. Although I'm sure cruft removal is a highly sought value regardless of the BSDs.

To answer your question, yes.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 11, 2021)

vigole said:


> Same neophyte comes to the FreeBSD website, again download the biggest image, start to install, and check every boxes.
> He reboots the system and will drop in CLI environment. Then he comes to the Forums, opens a threat, so forth and so on.
> 
> From neophyte perspective, i.e. download the largest ISO and tick everything, OpenBSD is better for desktop than FreeBSD.


I wasn't sure if you meant to use the word threat purposely or meant thread, so I left it as written. 

Since we're debating the future of FreeBSD as a desktop OS and OpenBSD has come into the picture, for evidential purposes only, I'll risk the fires of Hell to post a screenshot of my T43 running OpenBSD 6.2.

Point being with a change to x11/rxvt-unicode, a change of fonts with some tweaking of programs to match, set gKrellm not to show the OS, replace dearly departed XMMS with multimedia/audacious I could make it impossible to tell from the screenshot of my X61 with same screen ratio that follows it shown running FreeBSD at 306 days uptime.








It just takes work to do it with FreeBSD. And it's not like OpenBSD runs itself. There is very little difference in Administration of the two and I can only think of one difference in file hiearchy where OpenBSD does not have a directory FreeBSD has.

I tried to make it easy as possible to get to the desktop and end up with the same thing you do with OpenBSD. Only more because you get the doodads that make my idea of a desktop with it when you land. If they aren't interested in putting in the time to learn how to do that work then OpenBSD might be the answer to their prayers.

Personally, I think FreeBSD is more polished as a desktop and am much more comfortable using it, but that may come from difference in time spent using them. I know I'm going to rebuild my T43 and the next screenshot I post will be of it running FreeBSD.


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## a6h (Mar 11, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> I wasn't sure if you meant to use the word threat purposely or meant thread, so I left it as written.


`s/threat/thread`. Typo! It often happens, and I have go through my posts and correct it!


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## Argentum (Mar 11, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> Point being with a change to x11/rxvt-unicode, a change of fonts with some tweaking of programs to match, set gKrellm not to show the OS, replace dearly departed XMMS with multimedia/audacious I could make it impossible to tell from the screenshot of my X61 with same screen ratio that follows it shown running FreeBSD at 306 days uptime.


My FreeBSD-s have always worked a long time as long as the hardware has no faults. The best uptime on server I have had 1032 days:





... and it was taken down because of business considerations, not because of any fault...


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## zirias@ (Mar 11, 2021)

Cool, guaranteed vulnerabilities.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 11, 2021)

The core team & the devs are well aware of the importance of desktop for the project, for one because FreeBSD is a _general purpose_ OS, but maybe more so because that use case is the door to attract new contributors & developers; last not least they want to run _the BeaSD_ on their own laptops & desks.  Just look at the project's main website, _desktop_ is explicitely mentioned there, look into the wiki, desktop related topics take much space.


richardtoohey2 said:


> Yes, it's getting quite vicious around here


Zirias & me recenty had a thread (~16h support session) where we literally had to read the Handbook to an innocent _newbie_  Thanks to _the almighty BeaSD_ s/he finally succeeded.  Hey, for some non-_techies,_ the terms used in the Handbook & other docs are just _all Greek_, so eventually I'm ok with that.  Don't need that daily, though.


----------



## mark_j (Mar 11, 2021)

6502 said:


> They can be low-quality but are widely used and it is better to have support/driver in FreeBSD. The integrated NIC in many motherboards is RTL.


This is very true which is why I always put an intel card in to replace it.
(I must admit realtek aren't as bad as qualcomm onboard nic. Just my experience.)


----------



## scott_sch (Mar 11, 2021)

FreeBSD should just try to be the best version of itself.


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## lostpacket (Mar 11, 2021)

I've used FreeBSD since v4.3 for servers, and still do as preferred server platform. Granted I still have to use Linux for some where required, Openstack, XCP-NG, docker requirements (Bitwarden for example). 

I eventually switched desktop from Windows due to updates becoming painful and constantly breaking things, working in an IT support environment I also get to see how often Windows breaks, and what a pain in the arse it can be to sort. I started looking for an alternative desktop environment and tried most including Pop!_OS and Manjaro. Not being a fan of Gnome I went with Manjaro first which is not a bad Linux distro, then finally settled on vanilla Arch for the reason it doesn't have all the bloat, sure you can use the Anarchy installer for Arch but may as well just go with Vanilla Arch. Out of the box Arch also doesn't have a desktop option.

After getting new hardware (AMD Ryzen 3900X, Asus Rog Crosshair and 64GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX 2060) I decided to see how FreeBSD works as a desktop environment again, it's been awhile seen I tried FreeBSD as a desktop; and it has come on leaps and bounds! Installing the desktop environment (KDE) is quite painless and very quick using packages if that's your preference.

Most things seem to work fine under KDE, automounting USB devices I remember being a pain put that seems resolved. Wifi functionality is still strange compared to how convenient it is on Windows or Linux but wpa gui is manageable.

From a desktop for an office pc (mainly used for development) perspective it's runs quite well. LibreOffice works fine (after getting used to it from Word) for writing a lot of the documentation we  do, connecting to printers around the office is fine. PHPStorm works fine which is what I mainly need along with apache/php/sass etc. Gimp works fine (mostly) for image manipulation, inkscape, kdenlive for video editing, audacity, OBS is fine for YouTube stuff, draw.io obviously usable for network diagrams etc. Browser wise I use firefox so that works well, seems to be some browsers disappearing such as Chromium, Google-Chrome etc which would be useful to have for testing websites from different browsers. Our RMM (Take Control) remote access doesn't work under FreeBSD (but it doesn't work under Linux either). Screenconnect works well for remotely connecting to other PCs to help users as it's java based anyhow, the self-hosed ScreenConnect work's on Linux but updates are scarce and they are moving more towards Windows (or their cloud offering) with that anyway.

I still have to run virtualbox anyhow for certain Windows based stuff we use so any browser issues are overcome using them there. Windows works fine on virtualbox with dynamic scaling etc.

There are a couple of things lacking such as native Slack client (not sure why this couldn't be ported since it's written in Electron, same as MS teams). These work just fine from browser though, same as Zoom.

Wine is a different matter and trying to get some 64-bit Windows game working, which runs fine under Linux, work-in-progress atm.

All in all FreeBSD as a desktop works quite well, and it's stable. Some GUI options in the installer might make it viable for newer users.


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## zirias@ (Mar 11, 2021)

lostpacket said:


> not sure why this couldn't be ported since it's written in Electron


Behold a representative electron port: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/editors/vscode/Makefile?view=markup

Yep, electron is a major PITA. Under my dictatorship over the world, it would be strictly forbidden 

(oh, and, I also doubt slack and teams are opensource...)


----------



## Mjölnir (Mar 11, 2021)

/usr/ports/editors/vscode/pkg-descr reads:

```
VS Code is a type of tool that combines the simplicity of a code
editor with what developers need for their core edit-build-debug
cycle. It provides comprehensive editing and debugging support, an
extensibility model, and lightweight integration with existing tools.

WWW: https://code.visualstudio.com/
```
Wow, an an editor claiming it  _"combines the simplicity of a code editor..."_, with runtime-dependency on a sound library (ALSA).  We have to tell Phishfry, maybe he wants to include that genious peace of SW into one of his mini-BSD projects.


----------



## zirias@ (Mar 11, 2021)

Well, for a certain type of dev, electron is THE "hot shit" right now. I agree on the shit part…
As if the flood of pointless SPAs where a clean, lean and compatible web app would have achieved the same, wasn't enough. Now, these fanatics think it's a good idea to introduce the same (or: worse) hell for desktop apps. 

Interestingly, I've seen a similar mistake a long time ago the other way around. Anyone remembers "ASP.NET Web Forms"? Of course, MS ... back then, the "awesome" idea was "build a web app as if you were building a desktop app". Sounds familiar? Sure, citing the electron project page:


> If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app. Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.



(Disclaimer: Sure, electron wasn't a MS idea, but at least they quickly jumped on THAT bandwagon with excitement…)


----------



## Menelkir (Mar 11, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> /usr/ports/editors/vscode/pkg-descr reads:
> 
> ```
> VS Code is a type of tool that combines the simplicity of a code
> ...


Actually I'm more impressed of saying that a software using something like electron could be used as an example of "simplicity", specially about a code editor.


----------



## Barney (Mar 16, 2021)

failure said:


> If you don't think it has any future why you are using it and why you are here? Or you are here only to rant and actually not using it? Why don't just go with Linux since it's the ultimate operating system?


This kind of chatter is counter-productive. We use what we're familiar with.

I would LOVE to use FreeBSD for my touch projects, but FreeBSD is driven by where the money comes from. It's unfortunately not being developed for the user base, it's being developed for the companies paying the consulting fees of the developers. I tried to get involved with PC-BSD years ago but the guys there were not only stupid they were incredible A-holes. They simply didn't want to do the things that would have made the project a long term success. They didn't understand that you have to be really good at *something* to build a base.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Mar 16, 2021)

Barney said:


> FreeBSD is driven by where the money comes from. It's unfortunately not being developed for the user base, it's being developed for the companies paying the consulting fees of the developers.


Huh? What money? This statement is laughable.


----------



## mark_j (Mar 16, 2021)

Barney said:


> This kind of chatter is counter-productive. We use what we're familiar with.
> 
> I would LOVE to use FreeBSD for my touch projects, but FreeBSD is driven by where the money comes from. It's unfortunately not being developed for the user base, it's being developed for the companies paying the consulting fees of the developers. I tried to get involved with PC-BSD years ago but the guys there were not only stupid they were incredible A-holes. They simply didn't want to do the things that would have made the project a long term success. They didn't understand that you have to be really good at *something* to build a base.


To a degree you're correct, I believe, in that corporate dollars do flow to specific projects, but this is no different than other open source OS. It's natural that FreeBSD might focus more on servers, which are run by people like Netflix, which in turn fund server-focussed development. They're unlikely to put big funding into touch screens, are they not?

You are wrong to assume this is the reason for not supporting YOUR touch projects. Have you the skill, time (& money) to do such a project? Assuming a reply of 'no', then have you considered this is true of the developers working on FreeBSD? It's extremely disingenuous to think otherwise.
This is not to say I think the foundation, set up to fund the project, has not dropped the ball for a long time. For example, it took it years to fund 'ac' support. They have the money but they do seem focussed on the server 'market' with blinders/blinkers to the plight of the desktop users. (That's my perception, in reality I might be totally wrong).

But, to argue against myself it is hard to pick something that everyone needs: touch screen, HID devices, USBv4, sleep etc. That's why they have these surveys, should they act on the results, we might get better outcomes for 'niche' projects.


----------



## Mjölnir (Mar 16, 2021)

The community survey is the topic of tomorrow's _Office Hours_, and FMLU the project & the companies leveraging FreeBSD are well aware of the importance of the desktop use case, simply because that's the door to appeal new, young developers.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 17, 2021)

Barney said:


> This kind of chatter is counter-productive. We use what we're familiar with.
> 
> I would LOVE to use FreeBSD for my touch projects, but FretBSD is driven by where the money comes from. It's unfortunately not being developed for the user base, it's being developed for the companies paying the consulting fees of the developers.


You couldn't drive all that baloney away in a semi-truck if it had an Oscar Meyer logo on the side.

You've done nothing but whine, complain and find blame with FreeBSD for your lack of skill since you've been here. Statements made in light of your inexperience using FreeBSD. Mr. Barney "Big" Wheel, self-proclaimed Administer of a non-de-script "Company".

I'm going to contact the maker of MultiProxy myself and see what he says about making it available in ports. He was a nice guy and I'm sure he would be thrilled, if I have to learn to do it myself.

The question is no longer "Does Desktop have a future on BSD?". That question is moot. It has now been turned on the user. "Do you have a future on FreeBSD Desktop?" Here's the evidence to back it up, twice:







> You are wrong to assume this is the reason for not supporting YOUR touch projects. Have you the skill, time (& money) to do such a project? Assuming a reply of 'no', then have you considered this is true of the developers working on FreeBSD? It's extremely disingenuous to think otherwise.
> This is not to say I think the foundation, set up to fund the project, has not dropped the ball for a long time. For example, it took it years to fund 'ac' support. They have the money but they do seem focussed on the server 'market' with blinders/blinkers to the plight of the desktop users. (That's my perception, in reality I might be totally wrong).



PC-BSD Admins love for money took prescience over reason and character once Xsystems became involved and the focus changed from doing what's best for their users to what would go along with Xsystems way of running things. I was there for a couple years before they took over, cougar catflipped the fence for the forest fights, and shed that titchy wool disguise like the Obake I am.

When I snuck back in 2 years later Xsystems had moved in, bankrolled it and the forums were now only a means of silent information gathering to keep problems quiet that might make Corporate bottom lines go into the red zone..

Like adding WindowMaker WM to the base install because I posted to the forums saying I was using it and liked it at the time. But totally ignoring my bug report about how their implementation of the FireWall Manager GUO n Isotope 9.0 broke pf. Not to mention rants and raves falling on deaf ears for 2-3 months without as much as one word to acknowledge they had heard every word I said starting at Day 2.

Hunk a junk Windowmaker and PC-BSD were destined to become and they played a key role in it through beng made to take responsibility for their own Unethical and Inappropriate Behavior.

Viddy well, little brother, and ye shall hear the story of Weixiong the Ikiryo.

Now Ghosted from Existence along with everything PC-BSD, but me. And that''s where continued Negative Reinforcement comes in at Weixiongs word


----------



## eternal_noob (Mar 17, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> The question is no longer "Does Desktop have a future on BSD?". That question is moot. It has now been turned on the user. "Do you have a future on FreeBSD Desktop?"


I like this. FreeBSD chooses its users, not the other way round.


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## Snurg (Mar 17, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> PC-BSD Admins love for money took prescience over reason and character once Xsystems became involved and the focus changed from doing what's best for their users to what would go along with Xsystems way of running things.   ...   2 years later Xsystems had moved in, bankrolled it and the forums were now only a means of silent information gathering to keep problems quiet that might make Corporate bottom lines go into the red zone..


So PC-BSD was not always involved with ixsystems?
Did it start as independent project?


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 17, 2021)

Snurg said:


> So PC-BSD was not always involved with ixsystems?
> Did it start as independent project?


Yes. Xsystems did not become involved till sometime around or shortly after  2007. I joined in 2005, was around forum member #60, learned for a while and took aff time to learn in the trenches. When I came back approx. 2 years later Xsystems was already in full swing.

The Moore Bros used to respond to posts and were pretty friendly. After I returned the whole atmosphere was different, The forum became an information gaining system for them, very rarely did anyone ever answer a post, attitudes had changed and Dru Levine was now part of the team.

I had never met Dru and have only spoken to her once. She was very polite but only answered one of two posts I made about the situation with pf to make sure it didn't slip by unnoticed.  After I had already done my Black Sheep thing and posted at Wilsers Security Forun. I'm kind of hard to ignore for two months and even harder to ingore if I want to get noticed.

One of the Moore Bros answered the other post after she answered the first one I was done with PC-BSD politics, had More than enough of the Moore Bros. High and Mightly outlook and told him it was about time he responded to my post. Now that I had to post it at Wilders to get any response out of them, and it came post haste.

Then when they figured what I had not said a word about in the 7 years since would come out and tarnish their silver-plated reputation, They went to the extreme measures to Ghost me and everything PC-BSD with it. Forums, WiKi, etc. all vanished, 

I can pin it down by dates between two weeks time of it happening since I looked at the forums before the Firestorm and looking at it after a PC-BSD/FreeBSD flamewar where I let it be know Trihexagaonal and Weixiong are one person.

The Machiavellian Mastermind Moron of the Preposterous Plan will never stop paying. Until he publicly apologizes to me here for the mistake of underestimating me. First in thinking he could get away with Ghosting 7 years of my life and overestimating himself in thinking he could outsmart me in doing it and leave me with nothing I could do about it.

I don't think Dru is that stupid, don't think she did it, respect her even if I don't really know here, and blame Xsystems for her part in it. That narrows it down nicely from 2 people to 1 person.

There can only be one popcorn shrimp that has the power to do that, ego to believe he could pull if off and get away with it and I've burned up many a box of shrimp in the oven or deep fryer in my time.


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## Barney (Mar 30, 2021)

mark_j said:


> To a degree you're correct, I believe, in that corporate dollars do flow to specific projects, but this is no different than other open source OS. It's natural that FreeBSD might focus more on servers, which are run by people like Netflix, which in turn fund server-focussed development. They're unlikely to put big funding into touch screens, are they not?
> 
> You are wrong to assume this is the reason for not supporting YOUR touch projects. Have you the skill, time (& money) to do such a project? Assuming a reply of 'no', then have you considered this is true of the developers working on FreeBSD? It's extremely disingenuous to think otherwise.
> This is not to say I think the foundation, set up to fund the project, has not dropped the ball for a long time. For example, it took it years to fund 'ac' support. They have the money but they do seem focussed on the server 'market' with blinders/blinkers to the plight of the desktop users. (That's my perception, in reality I might be totally wrong).
> ...



"Time" is the key. You can be Matthew Dillon and spend 10  years writing your own OS because you don't like the way FreeBSD is going, or you can use some other OS that has the functions you need. These people who insist on using a particular OS to browse the web are just not mentally stable. I don't need FreeBSD to write code or to buy stuff on amazon. And I'm not going to spend 100 hours building a freebsd desktop when I can go on ebay and buy a used iMAC for $700.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 31, 2021)

Barney said:


> These people who insist on using a particular OS to browse the web are just not mentally stable. I don't need FreeBSD to write code or to buy stuff on amazon. And I'm not going to spend 100 hours building a freebsd desktop when I can go on ebay and buy a used iMAC for $700.


The Company that hired you as Administrator is to be commended for employing the Developmentally Disabled in such a high-ranking position.


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## Barney (Mar 31, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> You couldn't drive all that baloney away in a semi-truck if it had an Oscar Meyer logo on the side.
> 
> You've done nothing but whine, complain and find blame with FreeBSD for your lack of skill since you've been here. Statements made in light of your inexperience using FreeBSD. Mr. Barney "Big" Wheel, self-proclaimed Administer of a non-de-script "Company".
> 
> ...



FreeBSD was so much better when you didn't have to interact with the gamers and weirdos.


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## mark_j (Mar 31, 2021)

Barney said:


> "Time" is the key. You can be Matthew Dillon and spend 10  years writing your own OS because you don't like the way FreeBSD is going, or you can use some other OS that has the functions you need. These people who insist on using a particular OS to browse the web are just not mentally stable. I don't need FreeBSD to write code or to buy stuff on amazon. And I'm not going to spend 100 hours building a freebsd desktop when I can go on ebay and buy a used iMAC for $700.


Ok, so you're criticism of FreeBSD not funding your requirements was unwarranted? By your own admission you should have moved on and purchased something else.

I understand you. No one is forcing anyone to use FreeBSD, least of all me, so buy an iMac and use it. If it does what you need, hell, buy a Commodore 64.

Whatever gets the job done.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 31, 2021)

May I kindly ask for your approvement to go back on topic?  Thank you for your generosity.
Show stoppers:

Bluetooth (OOTB)
WLAN/WiFi beyond 54 Mbit/s
suspend/resume does not work reliable: e.g. my external audio plug gets no signal after resume (*)
_automagic_ hardware detection with kernel & userland drivers attachment is incomplete
FreeBSD@ARM not mature (tablets & StupidPhones are mostly ARM)
EDIT2 all that gaming stuff
younameit?
I.e., I can't install _the almighty yea free BeaSD_ on my buddy's or sister's laptop, neither on my mother's tablet.
EDIT * maybe I did not understand the bug fixing methodology well enough, but IMHO it could be improved: see e.g. my `periodic weekly` tells me for several weeks now:
	
	



```
Checking for out of date packages:
anacron-2.3_7 succeeds index (index has 2.3_6)
```
 see PR 253567


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## mickey (Mar 31, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> Show stoppers:
> 
> younameit?



Seamless integration of MTP/PTP devices.


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## scottro (Mar 31, 2021)

Does Linux have that?  I know that with CentOS, for MTP on a system with dwm/openbox, I have to manually mount my phone with simple-mtpfs, though maybe Gnome and friends do it automatically.  With FreeBSD, jmtpfs works well, with a single simple command, (or two commands, depending upon whether fuse is loaded). 

This is personal preference, but I don't want automounting of such devices and prefer to do it manually. Also, on my phone, if I connect it to the computer, I have to manually specify on the phone (a Pixel), that I want to allow file transfer, which I think is a good thing.


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## Beastie7 (Mar 31, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> younameit?



OpenRC. Long overdue. init/rc.d is getting a little long in the tooth for an increasingly dynamic/asynchronous world. 

And before all the greybeards throw a hissy fit; it was conceived by a NetBSD developer. It's safe.


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## zirias@ (Mar 31, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> OpenRC. Long overdue. init/rc.d is getting a little long in the tooth for an increasingly dynamic/asynchronous world.


Anything other than buzzwords here?


Beastie7 said:


> And before all the greybeards throw a hissy fit; it was conceived by a NetBSD developer. It's safe.


Which actual _problem_ does it solve?


----------



## Beastie7 (Mar 31, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Anything other than buzzwords here?
> 
> Which actual _problem_ does it solve?





beanpole said:


> There were actually a few reasons we moved to OpenRC for TrueOS:
> 1) Speed (as mentioned) - OpenRC is a (nearly) drop-in replacement for the current FreeBSD RC system, but since it is written in C instead of tons of shell scripts you get massive performance improvements (even without parallelization enabled)
> 2) Reliability: OpenRC is *very* reliable at managing/reporting the state of your services at any given time. With the FreeBSD RC system ~50%+ of the running services are nearly unmanagable (return errors when you run `service <name> status`, cannot be reliably started/restarted/stopped due to the "unknown" state of the current service, etc..)
> 3) Persistence: OpenRC has a couple built-in supervisor systems for watching/managing services:
> ...


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## zirias@ (Mar 31, 2021)

Speed? Well, if you boot your system all day long…

Then you have two points about "supervising" services, including the horrible idea of automatic restarts on crashes. Don't complain later if a service shreds your data. Any other form of supervision is _not_ the scope of rc, and can easily be integrated _if_ needed.

Then, why is the license relevant for something you don't need in the first place? The point about network interfaces is just uninformed, the `netif` service handles them separately.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Mar 31, 2021)

"My personal hope is that we are "battle-testing" it for FreeBSD right now on TrueOS and that we can help spearhead this for including it in FreeBSD for version 13+ or something."

The post was from 2017. The link in OP's post "Improving TrueOS: OpenRC" leads to"



> Open Letter to the TrueOS Community
> TrueOS Discontinuation
> *snip*
> I can’t explain just how much we appreciate you all being loyal fans of TrueOS and PC-BSD in the past.



I have many times.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 31, 2021)

I'd like to add a current & a recent example where IMHO a more modern init system would help:

Since it's last update, my net/vnstat does not start the daemon vnstatd(8) reliable anymore (occasionally, I have to manually restart it).  Of course that's very likely an error in it's service(8) script, but maybe a system driven by simple configuration data would be more robust?  Shell scripts are error-prone _per se _...
Recently I managed to screw up my ndispatch(3) name services, thereby killing the syslogd(8).  I did not notice that syslogd(8) is not running for quite a while, because I have not yet set up a monitor.  The point is: monitoring _could_ be closely tied to the init system; it doesn't have to & can be completely independent.  But if the init(8) system provided it OOTB, that would be an enhancement IMHO.


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## zirias@ (Mar 31, 2021)

I object both of these arguments.

Have a look at the init script in question: It's simple and just uses the (proven) mewburn rc library. The only thing it adds is some custom preparation, which you'd probably need with any init system, so, you'd script it. Either the problem is around there, or it's a problem with the daemon itself, neither of these would be solved by a different init system.
Monitoring is definitely useful, but should *never* be integrated in `init` itself. The whole userspace depends on init (e.g. it inherits any orphaned process); if it has bugs, your whole system is affected. So, an init-system delivering monitoring in a sane way would make it optional and implement it in a separate tool. Then, what's the advantage as opposed to just installing a standalone tool?


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## Jose (Mar 31, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> OpenRC. Long overdue. init/rc.d is getting a little long in the tooth for an increasingly dynamic/asynchronous world.


No thanks. Used it for years on Gentoo, and it's progressively getting worse. The original developer abandoned the project and the current maintainer is a systemd fanboi.

Check out the idiocy that is Opentmpfiles. That's right, a whole language and interpreter written in shell to create files and directories! All the in the name of systemd compliance.

The tmpfiles step takes several _minutes_ on my last remaining Gentoo server because it scales poorly with the number of modules that exist in your /lib/modules hierarchy. Yes, just the number that exist in that hierarchy, even if they're not loaded. Fast is one thing Openrc is definitely not.


Beastie7 said:


> And before all the greybeards throw a hissy fit; it was conceived by a NetBSD developer. It's safe.


He was a Gentoo developer when he developed Openrc. He abandoned Openrc and Gentoo and found a home in the Netbsd project.


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## Mjölnir (Mar 31, 2021)

Thx for the insights.  Cool -- I could take back my _Like/Thanks_ from Beastie7's post above


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## diego (Mar 31, 2021)

darkoverlordofdata said:


> I'm not trying to compare BSD to Linux - in fact they are almost identical. But these issues were the issues Linux had 10 years go. Maybe worse, or I would still be using Windows......


No comments from a guy with only 2 posts in the forum, no experience on BSD....
Enjoy yourself in Windows forums....


darkoverlordofdata said:


> the attitude of the BSD developers which can be summarize as "it's a server, why are you trying to use it for your desktop?".


this is a joke, isn't it?


darkoverlordofdata said:


> I think desktop BSD will be little more than a toy.


BSD is not a"toy"...........this forum isn't "toy" either.....
Stop being annoyed. It's really easy just drop into this forum, say bad things about BSD and run away...
good luck, pal!


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## Beastie7 (Mar 31, 2021)

Jose said:


> No thanks. Used it for years on Gentoo, and it's progressively getting worse. The original developer abandoned the project and the current maintainer is a systemd fanboi.
> 
> Check out the idiocy that is Opentmpfiles. That's right, a whole language and interpreter written in shell to create files and directories! All the in the name of systemd compliance.
> 
> ...



That's interesting. Because I didn't see any of these issues brought up in either the 2018 Developer Summit, various mailing list threads, and the code review submission in phabricator. It sounds like your 'concerns' are more mechanism than implementation, which I'm sure is trivial to remove/refactor.


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## Snurg (Mar 31, 2021)

Thank you Jose for that bit of information.
This should be sufficient to quote when anybody comes mentioning OpenRC.
While I like the idea of doing particular things with tools that are more efficient, I do not like any bad influence from L*x.
And that shell-based interpreter... that's the crown of all. 

Back to topic:


Mjölnir said:


> Show stoppers:
> 
> suspend/resume does not work reliable: e.g. my external audio plug gets no signal after resume (*)



The Wiki suspend/resume page is old, lot of obsolete, misleading/distracting info and much of the necessary content missing, marked as "TBD".

Furthermore, I haven't yet seen any efforts to collect hardware data regarding the _completeness _of their drivers.
Many drivers don't (correctly) implement the SaveStatus (before sleeping/powering off) and RestoreStatus functionalities, others work fine.

Thus, it would imho be very valuable to have hardware lists that show whether this works, and possible flaws, like when resume only works partially (say, sound works except some line input, etc).
Such information is not collected in the various BSD hardware databases, but could be very helpful to find/choose hardware that is known not to cause suspend/resume issues.

What could be the best approach to collect such information?
I guess forums, wiki and mailing list.

What would be needed to collect, for example, for sound devices?
pciconf info, product (embedded in laptop/mobo or separate PCI card?), NID maps?, driver/version used, ...?

*brainstorm*


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## boombim (Apr 1, 2021)

Answering questions from the topic title... Meh.

I've installed freebsd 13 on my ThinkPad t460 and... And it still has almost all problems which was before and which make freebsd almost unusable on desktop.
I love freebsd for its simplicity and laconic. I don't mind to spend some time to learn and manually tweaking. But everything has a limit.

I don't want to write driver for acpi which works bad (acpi hotkeys don't work, crashing on cover closing, etc).
I don't want to pin my audio devices to get just internal microphone and headphones jack work. It's nightmare.
I don't want get randomly malfunctions of WiFi on boot.
I don't want to live without ac WiFi.
And so on.

Do not misunderstand me. I like freebsd as I said before. I have to use Debian on on laptop because... Because it just works. Despite of strange systemD and awful pulse audio which I hate.

Sorry for the excessive emotionality.


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## shkhln (Apr 1, 2021)

T460 is _not a desktop_.


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## mark_j (Apr 1, 2021)

boombim said:


> Answering questions from the topic title... Meh.
> 
> I've installed freebsd 13 on my ThinkPad t460 and... And it still has almost all problems which was before and which make freebsd almost unusable on desktop.
> I love freebsd for its simplicity and laconic. I don't mind to spend some time to learn and manually tweaking. But everything has a limit.
> ...


I sympathise, but, if you really "like freebsd", then take the time to note down the issues and post a bug report.
All the moaning in the world on this forum will not get the attention of the developers (apologies, you aren't moaning but others do).
If you post the bug report, maybe no one will look at it, but there's more of a chance someone will. It's 10 minutes of your time.

Citing a recent discussion on a forum option for freebsd-current, one to help people file bug reports would be a welcome addition instead.


----------



## mark_j (Apr 1, 2021)

Snurg said:


> Thank you Jose for that bit of information.
> This should be sufficient to quote when anybody comes mentioning OpenRC.
> While I like the idea of doing particular things with tools that are more efficient, I do not like any bad influence from L*x.
> And that shell-based interpreter... that's the crown of all.
> ...


To cut a long story short...
You don't need a database, you just need to file a bug report and add your hardware characteristics to it if they don't work.
Then, if changes are made, volunteering to test will make the effort worthwhile.
Just my thoughts.


----------



## Snurg (Apr 1, 2021)

mark_j said:


> You don't need a database, you just need to file a bug report and add your hardware characteristics to it if they don't work.
> Then, if changes are made, volunteering to test will make the effort worthwhile.


As I understand the problem with sound chips, it is usually the OEM NID wiring that makes things difficult when it deviates from the reference implementation. Laptops are particularly evil in this regard.
So, without actual NID info not all things (inputs, outputs) can work. Without the NID table data, there is little the driver developers can do to add support for a particular sound card configuration.

Due to the multitude of sound cards, most of them crappy consumer grade stuff, it is virtually impossible to cover all cases.
So I'd think it would make more sense to support only a small set of sound devices, but support these well.
So a list of these (and the deviating OEMs to avoid) could make things much easier and avoid user frustration.

BTW, I like your idea of making sort of HOW TO for writing usable bug reports, depending on the hardware they are about.
So developers do not need to ask again and again for the things they need, instead get them in the first place.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Apr 1, 2021)

boombim said:


> it still has almost all problems which was before and which make freebsd almost unusable on desktop.


I will immediately quit using it as my desktop as I have for the last 17 years. Thank you.


----------



## mickey (Apr 1, 2021)

scottro said:


> Does Linux have that? I know that with CentOS, for MTP on a system with dwm/openbox, I have to manually mount my phone with simple-mtpfs, though maybe Gnome and friends do it automatically. With FreeBSD, jmtpfs works well, with a single simple command, (or two commands, depending upon whether fuse is loaded).


There is a kio slave for MTP devices in devel/kio-extras that should enable KDE applications to access MTP devices and I guess there is similar support in gvfs. Problem is, as of now the detection of MTP devices does not work, probably due to the downfall of HAL, so basically it's of no use right now.

As for jmtpfs, _works well_ is debatable. I had tested it on several occasions, first it was working, then it was not for no apparent reason, now it is working again but showed some strange behaviour (occasional crashes when listing directory contents, file permissions show up all wrong).



scottro said:


> This is personal preference, but I don't want automounting of such devices and prefer to do it manually. Also, on my phone, if I connect it to the computer, I have to manually specify on the phone (a Pixel), that I want to allow file transfer, which I think is a good thing.


Yes you have to set the USB mode to 'file transfer' before it can be accessed via MTP. There's also a default USB mode, so you could set it to always use file transfer mode, but personally I would consider that a security risk. Technically there is nothing to _mount_ as an MTP device is not a direct-access block device, MTP is a file based protocol more like FTP, so _automounting_ is not the right term. However, what a normal desktop user would expect (and rightfully so) is to plug in the device, open the file manager and be able to work with the device *without* having to issue commands in a shell before and after working with the device. As it is now on KDE, such devices do not even show up in it's device notifier, so integration is basically zilch.


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## a6h (Apr 1, 2021)

`# Thread ...  Page ... Reply ... View ... Date .....`
`1 Music ....  46 ..... 1144 .... 077k ... 23.09.2012` Thread music.34705
`2 Joke  .....  32 ..... 0783 .... 176k ... 18.11.2008` Thread its-all-about-jokes-funny-pics.286
`3 Future ...  15 ..... 0372 .... 022k ... 25.12.2019` Thread does-desktop-have-a-future-on-bsd.73482

_Keep going, still there is hope._


----------



## boombim (Apr 1, 2021)

mark_j said:


> I sympathise, but, if you really "like freebsd", then take the time to note down the issues and post a bug report.
> All the moaning in the world on this forum will not get the attention of the developers (apologies, you aren't moaning but others do).
> If you post the bug report, maybe no one will look at it, but there's more of a chance someone will. It's 10 minutes of your time.
> 
> Citing a recent discussion on a forum option for freebsd-current, one to help people file bug reports would be a welcome addition instead.


I did. For example I've sent bug report about acpi hotkeys to the `freebsd-acpi` mailing list.
And I get response. Person suggest me to prepare script... 

Anyway do you really guess freebsd team dunno about acpi issues or WiFi issues or sound output issues? Of course they know. Just looks like desktop (or laptop, ok) is not their primary goal. I saw some roadmaps about improving WiFi stack and audio driver. So team know about everything. Maybe lack of resources. I don't know.


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## jmos (Apr 1, 2021)

My two cents: FreeBSD fullfills my Desktop requirements to 100% - on the "big machine" at home as well as on my small netbook. Of course, setting up a netbook with FreeBSD the way I like it means a lot more work to do than with some other operating systems (… hm … maybe Windows would rob me much more time - and no-one says it's not for the desktop - so that's not an argument at all); That belongs to the circumstance that a) not anything is enabled by default (what means: an admin has to do some homework, but has full control over what's going on right from the start), and b) the desired applications are third party and mostly "as is" from the upstream. But that's what I like about FreeBSD - two of the reasons why I use it: As a desktop!

Stuff like "suspend to disk" I would never use - I want a clean boot when I'm using my computers, and a full poweroff when I'm done with my work. And things like "magical new icons" on my desktop f.e. when a USB disk is plugged in are IMO a design failure for a multi user OS: Why the hell does that mean that the user with display XY should have access to it? But as always: Sacrifices are gladly made on the altar of comfort without thinking about their price.

And what discussions about "init systems" have to do anything with desktop usage will always be a miracle to me: My understanding of "desktop users and their desktops" tells me they never get in touch with such stuff; And the often named "faster boot" argument is history with todays desktop hardware: If the boot takes 15 or 16 seconds no-one notices, the longest time of the boot process the manufacture of the mainboard catches before hitting my boot drive (so the most potential for optimizations are IMO outside any OS).

Not FreeBSD specific, but always named for the open source scene at all "why it sucks for the desktop": Hardware support. Well, over the last 25 years I had none hardware that didn't worked - even when setting up systems for others on their choice of hardware. So, where's the problem? The hardware support is great!

MTP? I only see geeks wanting their phones to be connected to their computers, that's not an opener for the desktop. But as "MTP" is named here…: I wouldn't claim any OS to support MTP, but Google to activate mass storage via USB again (what was their interest to pay their developers for disabling it since Android 5? before it was present…) - I would think everyone would suggest USB mass storage as self-evident on a smartphone. But hey, let's blame others not to take part in not giving full control of their own data. Having control of my data is another reason for FreeBSD on my dektop.

The average desktop users hates the command line (requires knowledge and has no modern touch). That's why it is not for the masses: You won't get far avoiding it. But IMO "not for the masses" is something complete different than "no future for the desktop", there's no "either or".


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## mickey (Apr 1, 2021)

jmos said:


> MTP? I only see geeks wanting their phones to be connected to their computers, that's not an opener for the desktop. But as "MTP" is named here…: I wouldn't claim any OS to support MTP, but Google to activate mass storage via USB again (what was their interest to pay their developers for disabling it since Android 5? before it was present…)


Geeks don't use MTP and USB cables, they rather use sshfs, sftp or other means to access it wirelessly. MTP is what normal users would use for the quite common case of transferring a bunch of photos to their desktop, or uploading some new music to their devices. There is nothing geek-ish at all about that. Mass storage, as in access your phone like it was a harddrive or USB flash drive, is an entirely different matter, has nothing to do with MTP and afaik support for that has ceased in newer android versions.


----------



## mark_j (Apr 1, 2021)

boombim said:


> I did. For example I've sent bug report about acpi hotkeys to the `freebsd-acpi` mailing list.
> And I get response. Person suggest me to prepare script...
> 
> Anyway do you really guess freebsd team dunno about acpi issues or WiFi issues or sound output issues? Of course they know. Just looks like desktop (or laptop, ok) is not their primary goal. I saw some roadmaps about improving WiFi stack and audio driver. So team know about everything. Maybe lack of resources. I don't know.


Lack of resources, of course. Simply put though, if a bug report is not filed and a plethora of people don't add to it "me too" then wouldn't you expect developers won't see it as important.
"do you really guess" is exactly the problem; you're guessing. Nothing will change if you 'guess' they know ahout it.


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## jmos (Apr 1, 2021)

mickey said:


> Geeks don't use MTP and USB cables, they rather use sshfs, sftp or other means to access it wirelessly.



Done that. But am I willing in the future to give that uncontrollable thing access to my sensible ssh logins? Or the way around: Am I willing to set that uncontrollable thing up to be a server?

With "geeks" I meant the persons one level over the average desktop user (sorry); According to my observation they don't think about SSH, instead in first case they're looking for the onboard-way - and not for building up new ones.

And yes, MTP can do other stuff. But that doesn't mean you couldn't exchange the same data with simple files transfers. But my argument was not "what geeks do", but what the dekstop user (the topic of the thread!) does not


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## Mjölnir (Apr 1, 2021)

shkhln said:


> T460 is _not a desktop_.


That's fastidious?  A laptop usually runs a desktop.  Today's desktop PCs are mostly these very small miniNUC _thangs_: these often have low-power mobile technology built-in, so they're just very much like laptops.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Apr 1, 2021)

diego said:


> BSD is not a"toy"...........this forum isn't "toy" either.....
> Stop being annoyed. It's really easy just drop into this forum, say bad things about BSD and run away...
> good luck, pal!


It makes a great toy, too, diego. Once you've bent it to your will and made it your toy. This is mine.
But you're right. And he should run.

Run! Run!
Fast as you can!
Before you end up
In Beasties frying pan!








boombim said:


> I don't want to write driver for acpi which works bad (acpi hotkeys don't work, crashing on cover closing, etc).
> I don't want to pin my audio devices to get just internal microphone and headphones jack work. It's nightmare.
> *snip*
> Do not misunderstand me. I like freebsd as I said before. I have to use Debian on on laptop because... Because it just works. Despite of strange systemD and awful pulse audio which I hate.
> ...


I'll give credit where credit's due.

Your statement about closing the lid and it crashing might be true on your box, but it wasn't on mine. It was sitting open running when it went sailing 6 feet in the air and landed top down closed.

I picked myself and it up, opened it up and it was still running like it never happened. Me too, so we just went about our business.

That image above is of my dearly departed dedicated Thinkpad X61 .mp3 player at 306 days uptime. I have a W520 serving in that capacity now. Do you think I'd be using them as .mp3 players if I didn't get good sound from them?

I either use a pair of Koss KTXPRO1 Titanium lightweight headphones, like the ones I'm using now to listen to The The - Sweet Bird of Truth with now on this W520, or run a patch cord from the headphone outlet into my Pioneer SA-520 and listen to it through my stereo speakers.

It's only 5:55am here so I'll let the rest of the building sleep another 5 minutes.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Apr 1, 2021)

mickey said:


> Geeks don't use MTP and USB cables, they rather use sshfs, sftp or other means to access it wirelessly. MTP is what normal users would use for the quite common case of transferring a bunch of photos to their desktop, or uploading some new music to their devices. There is nothing geek-ish at all about that.


I've never used `ssh` and have no need since all my computers are within reach. I've always used USB sticks for storage and transfer.

I'm not your average geek though.


----------



## aragats (Apr 1, 2021)

jmos said:


> am I willing in the future to give that uncontrollable thing access to my sensible ssh logins? Or the way around: Am I willing to set that uncontrollable thing up to be a server?


Only when I need I launch Termux in my smartphone, start `sshd` and `rsync` or `scp` stuff with/to my FreeBSD box, then press _Ctrl-D_ to quit Termux. Very simple and straight forward.
What can go wrong with that?


----------



## Alain De Vos (Apr 1, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> I've never used `ssh` and have no need since all my computers are within reach. I've always used USB sticks for storage and transfer.
> 
> I'm not your average geek though.


Instead of a  stick you can also mount your filesystems on networked computers with *fusefs-sshfs.*


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Apr 1, 2021)

Until you mentioned it I had never heard of sysutils/fusefs-sshfs and had to look it up on About FreBSD Ports.

According to the description given:



> SSHFS allows you to mount a remote directory over a normal ssh connection.



I have never used `ssh` once in 16 years of using FreeBSD, since starting with PC-BSD in 2005, or before that. Not that I don't know how to use it, I have no need for remote access to my computers.

They are all within about 30 feet of each other at any time and may all be running at once. When I finish a new build I populate each machine with relevant files saved to the same USB sticks from the last build of all machines, and all machines act as a back-up to those files. If one goes down the worst that can happen is I lose files from the last few days on that machine.

I've used `ftp` many times to upload files for my websites but prefer to log into the web interface so I can get the big picture.


----------



## Argentum (Apr 1, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> I have never used `ssh` once in 17 years of using FreeBSD, or before that. Not that I don't know how to use it, I have no need for remote access to my computers.


This is unbelievable!


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Apr 1, 2021)

My truth is always stranger than fiction. I may tell a tall tale now and then but I never lie.

My math isn't too good though. Once I got to thinking about it I didn't start using PC-BSD till 2005 and that was only 16 years ago.

I started using Linux sometime around 2002 and have a screenshot in the UNIX forum at dslreports.com from 2002 as Spamzilla.


----------



## Argentum (Apr 1, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> My truth is always stranger than fiction. I may tell a tall tale now and then but I never lie.


Today is an *April Fools' Day*!


----------



## shkhln (Apr 1, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> That's fastidious?  A laptop usually runs a desktop.  Today's desktop PCs are mostly these very small miniNUC _thangs_: these often have low-power mobile technology built-in, so they're just very much like laptops.


Not really, the key distinction there is that desktop is stationary, thus you don't have to bother with sleep mode, touchpad drivers and built-in wi-fi (AP in a bridge mode, anyone?). That applies even to crappy all-in-one PCs.


----------



## Mjölnir (Apr 1, 2021)

shkhln said:


> Not really, the key distinction there is that desktop is stationary, thus don't have to bother with sleep mode,


??? Why not?  Many desktop users would prefer that (+hibernation after some timeout) to poweroff(8)+boot(8).  Simply 'cause it's much faster.


shkhln said:


> touchpad drivers


No.  Even worse: touchscreen stuff...


shkhln said:


> and built-in wi-fi (AP in a bridge mode, anyone?).


Desktop PCs start to do wireless networking.  It's more convenient @SOHO, for it reduces that chaos cable gordic knot under the desk.


shkhln said:


> That applies even to crappy all-in-one PCs.


Exactly.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Apr 1, 2021)

I don't play April fool jokes, don't take Holiday or weekends off. I can't, I'm committed... I'm pox.

Prestigious pronoun prestidigitator Pronunciation Palatine Premiere perused poor paraphrased parodied people's previously pampered paradigm professionally paralyzed perpetually per purposely posing paradoxical perplexity permanently purely pleasuring perspicuous phantom Priests passionately pondering profusely proficient Pontification Pharaoh's phenomenally panther perfect performance, personably pausing, phrase phenom pox plucked precious Priestess Princess Poppy pretty poppies, personalizing picked posies, politely presented personally pleasantly.


----------



## shkhln (Apr 1, 2021)

Mjölnir said:


> Why not?


Because it doesn't work for you? All I'm saying is that those complaints have viable workarounds for the desktop case.


----------



## a6h (Apr 1, 2021)

According to _Andrew Tanenbaum_:

`Wireless ... Mobile ... Typical applications
No ......... No ....... Desktop computers in offices
No ......... Yes ...... A notebook computer used in a hotel room
Yes ........ No ....... Networks in unwired buildings
Yes ........ Yes ...... Store inventory with a handheld computer`

P.S. I don't use Wireless and/or Mobile, unless I have to. e.g. LTE/MODEM and 2FA. Although I use laptop as it's a desktop, i.e. it has a fixed position, I'm using LAN for connection, and I don't move it,
but as shkhln said, still it's not stationary.

But Mjölnir has a good point. To me, the line between desktop and laptop is very vague. Definitions are not very clear.
It's similar to the difference between CLI and TUI, or MCU and PLC.


----------



## Argentum (Apr 1, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> I don't play April fool jokes, don't take Holiday or weekends off. I can't, I'm committed... I'm pox.


Today NASA announced on their *Perseverance Mars Rover* FB page that *real pawprints *of a dog-like creature have been found on the surface of Mars.


----------



## Mjölnir (Apr 1, 2021)

shkhln said:


> Because it doesn't work for you? All I'm saying is that those complaints have viable workarounds for the desktop case.


I do use it (sleep/suspend, then hibernate after 15min) a lot; it does work somehow:
`uptime` `10:18nachm.  up 2 days,  4:03, 5 users, load averages: 0,67 0,60 0,64`, but not flawlessly.  I.e. you can see from that uptime when I wanted to play some song loud via my stereo.  No sound output on external _line-out_ after resume -> reboot(8).  _Bluetooth_ doesn't work, I have no driver for 811.2ac 802.11ac nor n: from iwm(4):
	
	



```
Currently, iwm only supports 802.11b and 802.11g modes.  It will not
     associate to access points that are configured to operate only in 802.11n
     or 802.11ac modes.
```
.  There just are no workarounds.  All that doesn't hold me back from using _the BeaSD_ as the only OS on my laptop, but I would even be more pleased if all these flaws would just work OOTB.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (May 14, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> … sailing 6 feet in the air and landed top down closed. …



My previous HP EliteBook 8570p was thrown from a first floor window. Along with (don't laugh) a _peace_ lily, and various other items. Ahem.

I probably kept the hard disk drive – if I recall correctly, the S.M.A.R.T. status didn't indicate a problem – but I never felt an urgent need to attempt reuse of the data.


Back on topic: yes, desktop has a future on BSD.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (May 15, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> Along with (don't laugh) a _peace_ lily, and various other items. Ahem.


I got my Grandmother a Peace Lilly when she was in the hospital with cancer in 1982.

I still have the Peace Lilly and am using FreeBSD as my desktop OS now. I wouldn't touch a computer for another 11 years.


----------



## a6h (May 15, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> Along with (don't laugh) a _peace_ lily,


Poor lily. BTW, for some screwball of unknown origin, I have a nickname for Linux: "LiLi". I'm loud, and dropping this nickname here and there. A while back, some self-designated warrior called me on that, and said, 'our COM3munity is better than that'.

But as I'm all about COM1 and conflict of IRQs, I'll continue to call it "LiLi". Now I have more motivations to do so. Refer to next paragraph, i.e. "Back on topic":

Back on topic:
507 days, an old topic, but since then I've made some improvements. I extend the use of BSD Desktop -- quote, unquote -- from FreeBSD to the OpenBSD; and hopefully NetBSD very soon.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (May 16, 2021)

vigole said:


> Poor lily.


I could stick a pencil in the ground and it would sprout leaves. 

It will be 40 years old next year and has outlived 3 marriages and a dog. And my first wife who was with me when we went to the Hospital after it was delivered. He was a good squirrel dog, too...



vigole said:


> BTW, for some screwball of unknown origin, I have a nickname for Linux: "LiLi". I'm loud, and dropping this nickname here and there. A while back, some self-designated warrior called me on that, and said, 'our COM3munity is better than that'.
> 
> But as I'm all about COM1 and conflict of IRQs, I'll continue to call it "LiLi". Now I have more motivations to do so. Refer to next paragraph, i.e. "Back on topic":


I think they have a Discord thingy for that. If not we should start one. 

Feel free to use this anytime and anyplace you like. And be sure to tell Tennessee Tuxedo I invited them over for Supper:



I'll tell the Tale of how FreeBSD is the most usr friendly desktop oriented OS I have ever used.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 2, 2021)

UNIX is user friendly. Its just picks whom it want to be friends with. - Somebody that wasn't me

It likes me because it I wouldn't stop breaking it till it did.


----------



## matt_k (Jun 2, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> UNIX is user friendly. Its just picks whom it want to be friends with. - Somebody that wasn't me
> 
> It likes me because it I wouldn't stop breaking it till it did.


A true love forced by power and relentless assault.
reminds me of this


----------



## Deleted member 67862 (Jun 2, 2021)

I'm having an awesome time using FreeBSD as a desktop. Yes, ports come and go, but you always have the freedom to revive an application you want if someone in the community hasn't already (like how I'm using a new SeaMonkey port).

Everything I've tried works out of the box or tells you _how_ to make it work. The documentation and support for FreeBSD blows any Linux distro out of the water in my experience.



> I think desktop BSD will be little more than a toy.



A toy I use every day, thankful to be away from the so-called "distro dance".


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 3, 2021)

Thank you, that's just what I feel like spitting out. Words at 3900RPM.


----------



## Aeterna (Jun 3, 2021)

I doubt it.
First of I have seen arguments that try to make difference between desktop OS and laptop OS. So lets make it clear:


> Desktop operating system is the main control program in a user’s *desktop* or* laptop* computer, also known as client operating system.


from
https://sites.google.com/site/operatingsystems10/home/desktop
However for the sake of argument let's stick for a moment with computer tower: is FreeBSD suitable and have it future as desktop/tower OS?
If you understand desktop OS really narrowly: I can run some stuff on my carefully selected hardware then answer is yes - FreeBSD will manage somehow at home.
However this is not what defines desktop OS in general:
I have several computer towers connected to very specific hardware: confocal microscopy, sequencing hardware, PCR, Western, and bunch of other hardware. None can be managed from BSD, linux, OS X. Form most part specialized hardware is not accessible from anything else than windows.
In fact situation worsened as some time ago a lot of diagnostic hardware had UNIX interface. Not anymore.
At home: sure but only if hardware is carefully selected for compatibility (which excludes from FreeBSD a lot of latest laptops). Even at home I need windows in VM because all photo editing software that I use is not available either for BSD or linux.

The only hope for home unix desktop os is the expansion of web applications which can alleviate  some of the problems, but not all of them.
I have been using BSD since mid 90' I did use SunOS, Linux, Netware, MacOS, Windows and Be. Since VirtualBox 4.x I don't have windows installed as main (dual booting) OS but I still need Windows for some stuff. This makes BSD/linux a fringe/enthusiast desktop OS and this will stay this way 'til the time when OS will not make that much of the issue.

BSD and linux future is in the server land as desktop OS not so much unless the only use is browsing, email, music, some video streaming and a bit of document editing excluding any specialized desktop software.


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jun 3, 2021)

Too few persons have freebsd installed for a commercial vendor to put time effort and money to create a a driver.
My piano, microscope camera, telescope camera all have windows drivers but no freebsd drivers.


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## kpedersen (Jun 3, 2021)

Aeterna said:


> Even at home I need windows in VM because all photo editing software that I use is not available either for BSD or linux.



Interestingly. I suspect that there is a greater number of people running a Windows 7 VM on a Windows 10 machine, just to access "non-cloud" editions of Photoshop and Maya than there are a total number of FreeBSD desktop users. 

But, I personally feel, if I am going to be running a VM anyway. It might as well be running on an OS that I enjoy and give a damn about.


----------



## Aeterna (Jun 3, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> Interestingly. I suspect that there is a greater number of people running a Windows 7 VM on a Windows 10 machine, just to access "non-cloud" editions of Photoshop and Maya than there are a total number of FreeBSD desktop users.
> 
> But, I personally feel, if I am going to be running a VM anyway. It might as well be running on an OS that I enjoy and give a damn about.


My main OS is Slackware. Why not FreeBSD? Hardware compatibility (when I got my current laptop FreeBSD was not compatible with the hardware). But I am planning to get another laptop, then I will install on my current hardware (i7-4810MQ, 32GB RAM, 1,5TB SDD) FreeBSD as hardware is conservative enough to get FreeBSD working.


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## kpedersen (Jun 3, 2021)

Aeterna said:


> My main OS is Slackware. Why not FreeBSD? Hardware compatibility


True. Linux is hard to beat in terms of hardware support. In general though, I still find FreeBSD much better than Windows for the ~5 year old machines I have. So can't really ask for any more than that.


----------



## Tieks (Jun 3, 2021)

Alain De Vos said:
			
		

> My piano, microscope camera, telescope camera all have windows drivers but no freebsd drivers.



Correct, don't even waste your time finding stuff like that WITH a FreeBSD driver. Still I do think things may change for the better. In the past lots of hardware came with a proprietary standard to connect the hardware to a computer. Nowadays manufacturers tend to use industry standards like USB, simply because it is cheaper. That will bring it nearer to Linux and hence FreeBSD. Another development is that ever more hardware runs on some embedded Linux or even FreeBSD. That's not a bad thing either. But for the time being, keep a Win7 VM at hand.


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## BostonBSD (Jun 3, 2021)

I remember wanting to use Linux/Unix as a desktop back in 2001-2002, however, the software I needed for school only ran on Windows {we had to use visual studio, ms office, and Maple V, as well as some other proprietary things that came with the textbooks}.

This is far removed from today, there are FOSS equivalents to all of these, I even have VScode on FreeBSD now.

Linux did seem somewhat plausible, but I wasn't willing to try given the limitations upon acquiring hardware, much easier today.

FreeBSD seemed like a whole lot of extracurricular work just to get a desktop, and there was hardly any desktop software available.  The only people who used it were like these hardcore computer dudes, with apparently extra hardware laying around.

If you want to know what it looked like back then, look at the RiscV processor today, the appearance is kind of similar {just some fringe thing no-one really thinks about in the mainstream}.

I haven't used windows since 2008 nor OSX ever and I don't really have any desire to.  BSD/Linux is much more fun anyways, they make it far easier to program your own widgets/scripts for personal use.

{You may notice that when a windows machine becomes obsolete due to performance, the problem is solved by wiping the hard drive and installing BSD.  It's more true today than ever before.  A lot of really good hardware is deemed unfit, not due to any particular issue with it, but really due to the software on it.  Windows 10 on an HP 800 G3 mini took about 5-10 minutes to boot....BSD and probably Linux takes only several seconds and it feels brand new.}


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## Hakaba (Jun 3, 2021)

The hardware compatibility has nothing related with the Desktop capability for an OS.
Mac OS 7 is a desktop OS without contest, but hardware had to be carefully selected (the computer must be a Mac, printer can not be serial, keyboard only work in ADB, graphic card must have specific romsize...)
NextStep is an another example. And what about Silicon Graphics, Amiga OS ...


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## Aeterna (Jun 3, 2021)

Hakaba said:


> The hardware compatibility has nothing related with the Desktop capability for an OS.
> Mac OS 7 is a desktop OS without contest, but hardware had to be carefully selected (the computer must be a Mac, printer can not be serial, keyboard only work in ADB, graphic card must have specific romsize...)
> NextStep is an another example. And what about Silicon Graphics, Amiga OS ...


shrug,
this is not about OS wars, none of the hardware that I listed above will work with OS X. Hardware compatibility is important and desktop must be capable to deal with the hardware. 


> NextStep is an another example. And what about Silicon Graphics, Amiga OS ...


What about VAX (I was using it in late 80')? 

The main question was: is there is a future for FreeBSD desktop. If drivers are not developed, this limits OS use as desktop. This requires money and army of developpers. Unfortunately BSD is not rich. 

To make it clear, this thread is about future of FreeBSD as desktop OS.


----------



## Fuzzbox (Jun 3, 2021)

> Aeterna said:
> 
> 
> > BSD and linux future is in the server land as desktop OS not so much unless the only use is browsing, email, music, some video streaming and a bit of document editing excluding any specialized desktop software.


But that's true for any OS ! I use a specialized business software daily in my job, which requires a dedicated USB smart-card reader, used with an accredited driver. This suite is the best tool for the job, but it's only available for Windows. That's a fact. But with the easiness of virtualization, I can run a Windows VM on FreeBSD or Linux, and use it as I would use any other software. I was already doing that in 2004 (Debian + VMware + Windows 2000). So it's not a real problem. 

This "desktop" and "hardware compatibility" questions always make me smile. In the early nineties, buying hardware in accordance to the OS your were willing to install was mandatory, and not the opposite.

I now run FreeBSD on four laptops and two towers, and I had only two hardware glitches ( a crappy wireless adapter and an USB keyboard). Indeed, they are not bleeding edge, but they work and they cost less !

Stop wondering if FreeBSD is usable as a desktop. Use it as a desktop now ! Only a wider adoption will lead to better support. That's what happened with Linux. And I think the current evolution of Linux creates a positive momentum to drain new users to this community.

My 2 cts.


----------



## mark_j (Jun 4, 2021)

Fuzzbox said:


> But that's true for any OS ! I use a specialized business software daily in my job, which requires a dedicated USB smart-card reader, used with an accredited driver. This suite is the best tool for the job, but it's only available for Windows. That's a fact. But with the easiness of virtualization, I can run a Windows VM on FreeBSD or Linux, and use it as I would use any other software. I was already doing that in 2004 (Debian + VMware + Windows 2000). So it's not a real problem.
> 
> This "desktop" and "hardware compatibility" questions always make me smile. In the early nineties, buying hardware in accordance to the OS your were willing to install was mandatory, and not the opposite.



I have to disagree with this. Back in 'them days' there was very little hardware differentiation, especially for things like the graphics stack. You supported CGA, VGA etc and ALL graphics cards did too. It did start to get out of hand with Voodoo etc (thanks ATI for driving the race to the top!). Nowadays it seems every revision of a card from nvidia or AMD breaks something previous or adds a new feature requiring yet another new driver and the lag associated. Obviously these companies produce drivers first and foremost for the dominant market: Microsoft.

It was the same with serial devices because they worked off 8250, then later 16550 with bigger buffers.
Ok, there were variations as db25 died out to be replaced by db9, but the UART interface stayed the same and hardware, not software.

Likewise, you had either 386 or 486 which basically operated the same, with small differences.  You had MFM, IDE, SCSI to support. Simple.
Memory overclocking? Ha. 

Nowadays you have USB and that is a pile of dog-poo. It's a miracle anyone can write drivers for that nonsense. Likewise Bluetooth.

Nope, hardware compatibility is much more nuanced than back in the early 90s (when 386bsd was kicking around). You only have to pull out FreeBSD 1 or earlier and look at the GENERIC config to see how things have changed.

But, you're correct with the desktop. Back then, a GUI consisted of a tiled Window manager, Xeyes and xTerm and we were happy.


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jun 4, 2021)

The lines of code of an accelerated gpu card driver got out of hand.
For vendors more lines of code is better.
Like the an oracle database.


----------



## mark_j (Jun 4, 2021)

Yes, that still seems to be a metric many companies use to measure "productivity", unfortunately.


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 4, 2021)

mark_j said:


> Nowadays you have USB and that is a pile of dog-poo. It's a miracle anyone can write drivers for that nonsense. Likewise Bluetooth.


Recently had massive issues with a Prolific ttl/usb adapter on Windows. The manufacturer changed their chip and updated the driver purposely to prevent use on (what they call) 3rd party knockoffs using the same driver. My older chip didn't work and annoyingly Windows update uses the latest non-working version which was almost impossible to roll back. I had to use a "hacked" driver from GitHub.

This kind of scummy bullsh*t really thankfully doesn't exist in FOSS desktops.


----------



## Fuzzbox (Jun 4, 2021)

> Nope, hardware compatibility is much more nuanced than back in the early 90s



You're right, I should have written the late 90s ! My excuse is that it's already a long time ago  
I remember specifically buying a Sound Blaster sound card, a HP 710c printer, a Matrox G400 video card and an Alcatel modem, because they were known to be supported by Red Hat Linux.


----------



## BostonBSD (Jun 4, 2021)

I have a suspicion that all of these peripheral devices are going to be integrated in the future and driver issues will gradually become a thing of this time period (how clear does clear have to be?  how vivid does vivid have to get?  how high is high definition?).

Not so long ago flash plugins were a farce in the FOSS world, now we have html5 and no one talks about flash anymore.


----------



## Hakaba (Jun 4, 2021)

Aeterna said:


> this is not about OS wars,


You miss my point. It is not because the hardware have to be chosen carefully that FreeBSD has less "Desktop" capacity. It is because the market share was 90% Wintel today that we link the two subjects.

FreeBSD is the only OS that I install in my laptop (a recent MSI laptop). My NAS, my printer, my USB keys ... works. The situation is better than any computers in 90's. But I have an incompatible Intel+NVidia cards config. That is not the responsibility of FreeBSD, but mine. And the proof is easy. If FreeBSD need to handle the MSI laptop, all Linux distribution have to (and this is not the case).
For me a good answer can be in the install step. A step that list all compatible hardware and all unknown one could be a good warning.


And as an OS X user, each time I want to buy something, I need to be carefull with OS X compatibility with some surprise. I buy a headphone with "compatible OS X" and Jack and surprise this headphone does not work on Windows, Android and neither on my FreeBSD laptop... Is has a standard jack !


----------



## richardtoohey2 (Jun 4, 2021)

Hakaba said:


> For me a good answer can be in the install step. A step that list all compatible hardware and all unknown one could be a good warning.


Great, who is going to do all that work?  And test all the hardware (that won't be cheap), and keep the list up-to-date?  And across all supported versions of FreeBSD, and platforms (e.g. does the device work for 32-bit, 64-bit, Intel, ARM, etc. etc. etc.)


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## mark_j (Jun 4, 2021)

richardtoohey2 said:


> Great, who is going to do all that work?  And test all the hardware (that won't be cheap), and keep the list up-to-date?  And across all supported versions of FreeBSD, and platforms (e.g. does the device work for 32-bit, 64-bit, Intel, ARM, etc. etc. etc.)


Does this fill that niche? https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/new-hardware-database-for-bsd-systems.75651/


----------



## 6502 (Jun 4, 2021)

BostonBSD said:


> {You may notice that when a windows machine becomes obsolete due to performance, the problem is solved by wiping the hard drive and installing BSD.  It's more true today than ever before.}


I am not sure for this at least with browser comparison. If I remove Windows, install BSD/Linux and run the web browser - it is obviously slower than on Windows. Probably the reason is in Xorg (GUI). I have not tested Wayland yet, maybe it will make browser faster.


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## kpedersen (Jun 4, 2021)

6502 said:


> I am not sure for this at least with browser comparison. If I remove Windows, install BSD/Linux and run the web browser - it is obviously slower than on Windows. Probably the reason is in Xorg (GUI). I have not tested Wayland yet, maybe it will make browser faster.


I think what was being meant is that you can't even install the latest browser on Windows XP. So no matter how "slow" FreeBSD might be, it can still actually render a "modern" website.

Though in general, most open-source UI toolkits suck in terms of performance and are probably the reason why the Windows version of software (especially web browsers) feels faster.


----------



## zirias@ (Jun 4, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> Though in general, open-source UI toolkits suck and are probably the reason why the Windows version of software (especially web browsers) feels faster.


Except anyone who cares about their mental health will use _some_ toolkit on Windows as well. Building a UI on plain win32 API is certainly possible, probably quite efficient (at runtime, not at coding time), but most certainly bad for your brain


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## kpedersen (Jun 4, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Except anyone who cares about their mental health will use _some_ toolkit on Windows as well. Building a UI on plain win32 API is certainly possible, probably quite efficient (at runtime, not at coding time), but most certainly bad for your brain


I don't really know what UI toolkit Firefox uses on Windows. I would be surprised if it was Gtk or Qt. They probably have a light abstraction layer ontop of Win32.

wxWidgets I suppose has a similar approach. Unfortunately on Linux/BSD, it sticks ontop of Gtk or Qt so you lose that "lightness".


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## Menelkir (Jun 4, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> I don't really know what UI toolkit Firefox uses on Windows. I would be surprised if it was Gtk or Qt. They probably have a light abstraction layer ontop of Win32.
> 
> wxWidgets I suppose has a similar approach. Unfortunately on Linux/BSD, it sticks ontop of Gtk or Qt so you lose that "lightness".


There's a lot of software that uses gtk and qt on top of windows (even some games do that, to be even worse, some games uses qtwebkit/webkit-gtk).


----------



## zirias@ (Jun 4, 2021)

Didn't find anything about Firefox. Chromium indeed uses an own abstraction (well, isn't this adding yet another layer?)

Even this abstraction doesn't use win32 directly, but WTL. Never used it myself, but it's presumably a great choice when the target is only Windows, cause it's very thin and still abstracts away the madness of win32 

OTOH, I don't see what should be so bad about Qt (or maybe GTK as well, although I never used it myself). Maybe _how_ you use these toolkits plays a role as well…


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 4, 2021)

Zirias said:


> Didn't find anything about Firefox. Chromium indeed uses an own abstraction (well, isn't this adding yet another layer?)



I am starting to suspect that it doesn't really have much to do with the number of layers but instead with what you layer it on top of. Win32 (and MFC) might be naff to develop with directly but even with a few abstraction layers, the resulting program is pretty crisp and snappy.

I ran Gimp on Windows a while back and it was fairly painful in terms of speed. However this has Gtk3 in the mix. I just don't believe that Gtk or Qt are serving us well (though in my tests, Qt *is* lighter than Gtk).

I was updating my fork of a level editor (you can see the kind of UI requirements here) from Gtk2 to Gtk3 and was simply not satisfied with the performance. The weird thing is that performance doesn't usually bother me. However Gtk3 is so sluggish that usability is starting to decline and it is starting to feel broken. The worst thing is that I feel this is by design (they want it slow so they can fit in their naff fade / translation effects and other tacky gimmicks).


----------



## zirias@ (Jun 4, 2021)

Well, knowing only one of them (in my own projects, I use exclusively Qt for GUI), it's probably unfair to draw a comparison. All I can say is that Qt serves me well implementing the UI layer only once (yes, I _am_ too lazy to do otherwise), and I never felt there was a problem with performance, and never got complaints from users…

About GTK3, I remember there was kind of an uproar among Windows users of emulators/vice when they dropped the different UIs (one for each platform) with major version 3 and instead used GTK3 everywhere. Most complaints from Windows users were something like "it's slow as hell". Still, this is no proof, there might have been other reasons, e.g. because OpenGL rendering is part of the picture. And they managed to reach a state by now that seems to satisfy most users on Windows as well, without getting rid of GTK3.


----------



## Jose (Jun 4, 2021)

richardtoohey2 said:


> Great, who is going to do all that work?  And test all the hardware (that won't be cheap), and keep the list up-to-date?  And across all supported versions of FreeBSD, and platforms (e.g. does the device work for 32-bit, 64-bit, Intel, ARM, etc. etc. etc.)


And considering hardware churn, that work would never be done. There's always new hardware popping up, and old hardware becomes unavailable. The database would always be out of date.


----------



## Hakaba (Jun 5, 2021)

richardtoohey2 said:


> Great, who is going to do all that work?  And test all the hardware (that won't be cheap), and keep the list up-to-date?  And across all supported versions of FreeBSD, and platforms (e.g. does the device work for 32-bit, 64-bit, Intel, ARM, etc. etc. etc.)


There is few command to have a good idea at first step. I list few possibilities here in this forum.


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 5, 2021)

Jose said:


> And considering hardware churn, that work would never be done. There's always new hardware popping up, and old hardware becomes unavailable. The database would always be out of date.


Yeah its strange. Hardware databases always start with the best intentions but simply seem to rot. Especially if they are wiki based. People forget about them and newcomers don't even know they exist until they are ancient dust.

How about the forums enforce us to fill out a hardware profile before it lets us log in or register (nice and invasive! ). Or in massive red letters under the .iso download button "*Official Hardware Database*". Of course this does run the risk of scaring people away thinking they have unsupported hardware even if they don't, the database is just out of date.

Some thing like this is very useful: https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware/workstations/search
(Though I don't have one machine that is supported by anything newer than RHEL*6*! What the hell? I bought this machine less than 15 years ago!)


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 5, 2021)

Jose said:


> ...and old hardware becomes unavailable. The database would always be out of date.


Vintage Thinkpads are readily available on ebay and the hardware on every one of them I've bought has been supported.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jun 18, 2021)

darkoverlordofdata said:


> Does Desktop have a future on BSD?



Yes.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 19, 2021)

Forget about desktop on FreeBSD.

Is FreeBSD run by sane people in the first place?

I just reformatted a hard disk that was running the latest FreeBSD.

The trigger?

Why on earth should the port build for CMake pull in Python?
And I checked with a downloaded CMake source tar ball. It just builds fine outside of port system.

I'm an old C programmer and I usually select most optimized operating systems for our embedded systems. One rule is that simple self contained BSD build tools.

FreeBSD is turning into a mess. Port system is brokenup. BlueTooth doesn't work. WiFi is iffy even with well known drivers.

I don't like the bloated Linux distros with ever complex package dependencies.

Time to migrate to something more exotic.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jun 19, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Forget about desktop on FreeBSD.



No.


----------



## shkhln (Jun 19, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Why on earth should the port build for CMake pull in Python?


You'll have to read the Makefile to find out.


----------



## Jose (Jun 19, 2021)

shkhln said:


> You'll have to read the Makefile to find out.


You don't even have to work that hard. Look at its Freshports page. Note that its _only_ dependency is textproc/py-sphinx. Scroll down a little further and note that `DOCS=on: Build and/or install documentation`. Mystery solved.



SR_Ind said:


> I'm an old C programmer and I usually select most optimized operating systems for our embedded systems...


Your behavior makes me question your optimization skills.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jun 19, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> WiFi is iffy



Yes.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 19, 2021)

Jose said:


> You don't even have to work that hard. Look at its Freshports page. Note that its _only_ dependency is textproc/py-sphinx. Scroll down a little further and note that `DOCS=on: Build and/or install documentation`. Mystery solved.
> 
> 
> Your behavior makes me question your optimization skills.


First is of all does this forum has any rule against uncalled for insults.

Let me respond back in kind.

I always install ports with examples and docs turned off. Why should I have to look into Makefiles?

Brush up on your comprehension skills.

I may posses programming skills of whatever level. That's why I straightaway built CMake as is from the sources. 

But you seem to lack basic social etiquettes, as amply demonstrated by your sly of the hand indirect ad hominem.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 19, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> Yes.


So, another one out of the woodwork.

Send me your shipping address buddy.

I will send you a rtwn device and an ARM based SBC of your choice. You get it working. I will handle the shipping.

And. Since you felt compelled to jump. Did you care to check the BlueTooth support?

Missed the word "iffy"? My Atheros works fine. My old ural devices used to work fine. But despite the claims in the documentation the rtwn device doesn't work.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jun 19, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Did you care to check the BlueTooth support?



Yes.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 19, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> Yes.


Excellent. 
Hope it is worthy of 21st century. 
Could you care to send me a brief write up on how to set up a BLE 5 mesh on top of FreeBSD (take latest), with your recommendation of a BlueTooth 4.1+ adaptor?
I will pay you for your services, whatever you charge per hour.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jun 19, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> … Could you care to send me a brief write up on how to set up a BLE 5 mesh on top of FreeBSD (take latest), with your recommendation of a BlueTooth 4.1+ adaptor? …



No.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 19, 2021)

grahamperrin said:


> No.


That's the answer I expected.


----------



## Phishfry (Jun 19, 2021)

He is not wrong. I still keep a Windows XP laptop for transferring photos off my flip phone.
Avoid FreeBSD bluetooth. It has limited capability. It is good advice.


----------



## Beastie7 (Jun 19, 2021)

Phishfry said:


> flip phone.


----------



## Beastie7 (Jun 19, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Forget about desktop on FreeBSD.
> 
> Is FreeBSD run by sane people in the first place?



Quit trolling. You're just finding reasons for incite a flame war. Nobody is holding a gun to your head, forcing you to use FreeBSD. Gracefully depart should you please.


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 19, 2021)

Honestly, I wholeheartedly agree with OpenBSD's move to remove Bluetooth entirely. Even on Windows and macOS it barely works. At least with it removed, it saves the user spending time wrangling with a broken technology.

Ports like CMake pulling in more dependencies than they should is a bit of a known problem. I do understand that making the port pull in everything does help somewhat with making deterministic builds (i.e many build scripts do random crap depending on what they detect is installed). However it is something that the FOSS community will need to improve one day. It is making software a little large and broken.


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jun 19, 2021)

Openbsd has interesting idea's. Think of sndio or openntpd or opensmtpd.
But maybe bluetooth with closed source blobs ?


----------



## shkhln (Jun 19, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Why should I have to look into Makefiles?


To make sure they don't `rm -rf /` your entire system? Seriously, you are the person acting surprised about dependencies and stuff, Makefile is the obvious place to check then.



Jose said:


> Scroll down a little further and note that `DOCS=on: Build and/or install documentation`.


Actually™, it's `MANPAGES_BUILD_DEPENDS=	sphinx-build:textproc/py-sphinx`.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jun 19, 2021)

Alain De Vos said:


> … maybe bluetooth with closed source blobs ?



Yes.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 19, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Forget about desktop on FreeBSD.
> 
> Is FreeBSD run by sane people in the first place?


You tell me.
And please, be as brutally honest and verbose as possible, embarrassing as I know this is going to be...


----------



## Menelkir (Jun 19, 2021)

Trihexagonal said:


> You tell me.
> And please, be as brutally honest and verbose as possible, embarrassing as I know this is going to be...
> 
> View attachment 10242


Only 11 Rush songs, yeah, you're pretty much insane.


----------



## mark_j (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Forget about desktop on FreeBSD.
> 
> Is FreeBSD run by sane people in the first place?



You may not like FreeBSD, that's your prerogative but you have no reason to call into question people's sanity. That's just a stupid thing to do. Are you stupid?




SR_Ind said:


> I just reformatted a hard disk that was running the latest FreeBSD.
> 
> The trigger?
> 
> Why on earth should the port build for CMake pull in Python?


Because some dependency of CMake requires something built with python. Your argument here is with, most likely, the makers of CMake.




SR_Ind said:


> And I checked with a downloaded CMake source tar ball. It just builds fine outside of port system.



It does? How miraculous. It had no dependencies? Phooey.




SR_Ind said:


> I'm an old C programmer and I usually select most optimized operating systems for our embedded systems. One rule is that simple self contained BSD build tools.



Then why are you using CMake rather than the old autotools? Yes, I use CMake extensively and it has its benefits, but the old automake etc tools work just fine.




SR_Ind said:


> FreeBSD is turning into a mess. Port system is brokenup. BlueTooth doesn't work. WiFi is iffy even with well known drivers.


It's not brokenup (sic), but yes it does have its problems, but it's a convenience. It's even more convenient to use packages.

As to bluetooth, that is just a plain mess and akin to the USB "standards".
Someone needs a lot of time, and probably working on it as their paid job, to unravel the mess that is. Are you volunteering time, expertise or money for that endeavour?

I have no doubt that should FreeBSD have someone like qualcomm write their driver for them they'd be as grateful as Linux was, but that hasn't happened.



SR_Ind said:


> I don't like the bloated Linux distros with ever complex package dependencies.
> 
> Time to migrate to something more exotic.



Good luck with that.


----------



## Menelkir (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Time to migrate to something more exotic.







__





						TempleOS
					






					templeos.org


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind Your sole purpose in being here is to complain about your inadequacy in using FreeBSD. Your posts are pointless and worthless and, not to mention, uneducated. 

You are a Linux user and a redditor and I fart in your general direction.
Go away.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 20, 2021)

mark_j said:


> You may not like FreeBSD, that's your prerogative but you have no reason to call into question people's sanity. That's just a stupid thing to do. Are you stupid?


That largely depends on if he answers. 

Do you know how many times I've said that? I count 6 times and each ends the same way.


----------



## Beastie7 (Jun 20, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> Even on Windows and macOS it barely works.



Bluetooth works exceptionally well on my rMBP. You sure yours wasn't some Chinese knockoff? 



kpedersen said:


> At least with it removed, it saves the user spending time wrangling with a broken technology.



I'd rather the committers not be lazy and fix usable technology. Hell, I'd throw money myself at something like this, but the committers (and to some extent, the Foundation) have a hard time listening to their user base. WiFi is also broken on FreeBSD, would you suggest removing that as well? What about USB 3/4 support? it's also broken. Let's remove that too. 

Let's not nurture more detractors of FreeBSD here..


----------



## decuser (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> First is of all does this forum has any rule against uncalled for insults.
> 
> Let me respond back in kind.


Point of order. Your original post stated:


> Is FreeBSD run by sane people in the first place?


Not a great way to start out.


----------



## decuser (Jun 20, 2021)

My whinometer is pegged. Why bitch and moan about it - do something. Fix a problem, support someone fixing problems or go do something constructive with your time.


----------



## Geezer (Jun 20, 2021)

decuser Are you really a dec user? I haven't used one of those for forty years.


----------



## decuser (Jun 20, 2021)

Geezer said:


> decuser Are you really a dec user? I haven't used one of those for forty years.


These days, the closest I come to using DEC is my whizbang PiDP 11 or my simulated SimH PDP-11, but I learned DOS on a DEC Rainbow 100, my dad was a Digital Equipment Service Engineer so I was exposed to DEC hardware early in life, and I heart research unix v6 which runs on pdp-11, so I guess you could call me a dec user .


----------



## fbsd_ (Jun 20, 2021)

While not being able to run too much applications and some desktop envoirements crashing like one that I installed to FreeBSD 12.2 KDE5, I dont think so. It can become very nice if a big change happens like one that Apple did. 
When I look at this Unix tree graph.








						Unix-like - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				



Some old MacOS's contains some parts of FreeBSD and they did very good job. I like design of Apple products. Lots applications supports too. As far as I know they currently using kernel named "XNU" so they just developed their own kernel and its running on new MacOS's and AppleWatch's. Anyway, its possible but very hard. Even hardware support is very less so it needs a lot of hardware supports first before desktop


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 20, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> Bluetooth works exceptionally well on my rMBP. You sure yours wasn't some Chinese knockoff?


Heh, or perhaps yours was. Has a better chance of working that way compared to Apple's bargain bin hardware selection.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 20, 2021)

Whoa. Seems like a lot of ruffled feathers. Sincerest apologies if it meant personally to some of you.

Maybe this was wrong thread to complain about (sharing my frustration) about the state of radio interfaces in FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is better suited for embedded space. 
It will take a fraction of effort to get state of the art radio networking capabilities in FreeBSD.
Unfortunately, that effort doesn't come cheap. Radio networking stack development is less common skill.
No idea what are the funding priorities of the FreeBSD foundation.

Desktop will remain a shifting goalpost, unless the approach changes.
Desktop is simple, if and only if FreeBSD adopts a GUI/Widget/WM stack as the first class citizen. Just bundle Qt GUI and Widgets in the base system with a bare bone window manager with a set of configuration tools. 
But the catch here is that no developer will spend their time to build these simple GUI tools, if the underlying OS has somewhat sub par hardware support.

Chicken and egg situation.


----------



## bsduck (Jun 20, 2021)

fbsd_ said:


> Even hardware support is very less so it needs a lot of hardware supports first before desktop


Just a reminder: Apple's MacOS has much, much less hardware support than FreeBSD, and this doesn't prevent it to be the second most widely used desktop operating system around the world.


----------



## fbsd_ (Jun 20, 2021)

bsduck said:


> Just a reminder: Apple's MacOS has much, much less hardware support than FreeBSD, and this doesn't prevent it to be the second most widely used desktop operating system around the world.


Oh I see. On the second hand they building Macbooks and iMac kinda products by choosing thier supported hardwares. Are someone gonna create a FreeBSD distro that only supports certain hardwares then sell it with their self made devices. Yea maybe but It will be very hard to make FreeBSD supports most of softwares and bug fixes so I see developers doing a lot of contributions every day and thats what we getting. It would be more popular and useful if people be able to download it from internet without thinking hardwares. Like first time I install Linux, I were dont know anything about hardware supports, just thinking hardwares magicly connecting to system lol. It must be like that.


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Desktop is simple, if and only if FreeBSD adopts a GUI/Widget/WM stack as the first class citizen. Just bundle Qt GUI and Widgets in the base system with a bare bone window manager with a set of configuration tools.


It is expected a FreeBSD user can use `pkg install` to trivially add this stuff. It will never be in the base install because it doesn't make sense for so many use-cases of FreeBSD.

As a C developer, you should also probably realize the issue with Qt and non-standard MOC for an OS primarily focussing on C. The very fact we have a C++ compiler in base is "luck".


----------



## Jose (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Brush up on your comprehension skills.


Project much?



SR_Ind said:


> Maybe this was wrong thread to complain about (sharing my frustration) about the state of radio interfaces in FreeBSD.





And don't move the goalposts. You came here to whine about a Python dependency in a command-line build configuration tool.


----------



## sidetone (Jun 20, 2021)

Cmake has lots of dependencies, but really, those are ones that are the most useful, and should be common for almost everything. Python and Sphinx are really useful, and make good shared dependencies. If Sphinx could replace Doxygen for all cases. I would actually leave Sphinx in, and its common dependency of Python.

Cmake is like its own environment that has some common dependencies with a few other makes. It's the closet one to being multi-platform.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 20, 2021)

Jose said:


> Project much?
> 
> 
> View attachment 10246
> And don't move the goalposts. You came here to whine about a Python dependency in a command-line build configuration tool.



See there.

You don't seem to understand the issue.

I build my desktop from scratch. I use my desktop for development work.
I don't require Python and any of the interpreted runtimes.

If I start changing the Makefiles that came with the ports, then it will bring the whole question of using the ports.

Plus. When I create a FreeBSD image with all the development tools preloaded for one of my development boards, I just cannot afford to have any unnecessary tools included that I don't require. 

The problem is not restricted to CMake, if you care to look around.

I manually changed around 4 or 5 Makefiles them work with LLVM10. That's the latest. If I leave an unattended install my system will end up with LLVM8, LLVM9 and LLVM10.

Some of the Mesa ports complaints being broken and grudgingly builds with Python2.x dependency. Who needs Mesa? Desktop.

Rather off topic, not related to FreeBSD per se, I don't understand the point of Meson being chosen for building Wayland. 

A port system that is not streamlined is one fundamental problem, whether the system is intended to used as server, desktop or appliance. 
Multiple tools means, multiple attack surfaces. Why should I keep something that don't need and just letting it to be an attack vector? 

Please don't try that "you came here" stuff. I'm in this forum much longer than you.


----------



## Jose (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> See there.


(Snip a bunch of off-topic whining about amateurish system building.)

None of those things are in any way related to the topic of this thread, so the question remains, why are you here?
Are you really interested in Freebsd as a viable desktop operating system?
Or do you want to spread a bunch of FUD about how much it sucks?


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 20, 2021)

sidetone said:


> Cmake has lots of dependencies, but really, those are ones that are the most useful, and should be common for almost everything. Python and Sphinx are really useful, and make good shared dependencies. If Sphinx could replace Doxygen for all cases. I would actually leave Sphinx in, and its common dependency of Python.
> 
> Cmake is like its own environment that has some common dependencies with a few other makes. It's the closet one to being multi-platform.



Agreed with the Doxygen vs Sphinx thing.
IMHO, even with all good things with Sphinx, that's strange choice for a build chain that is primary used by C/C++ community.
Hope it stays optional.


----------



## sidetone (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind
I get some of what you're saying. I once pointed out that 14 hours of additional build time was excessive, to simply add a GCC compiler. I told them, it complies in no time by using the base LLVM/Clang compiler, and they fixed that. I still use the same kind of logic to point out inefficiencies. It has gotten much better. However, also there's some funny stuff when trying to upgrade a program, and seeing the amount of programs that need to be de-installed, and reinstalled. Trying to untangle this is difficult. Some problems come with that there are different suites of software from different camps that do the same thing, or that most people use the most complicated desktops, and make the defaults with those additional unneeded dependencies.

Only shell and C are more universal as a language than Python, so I am completely good with Python. Lua about matches Python in terms of how universal they are. I was thinking of Sphinx being optional, it can be, but it is so essential, I would rather leave it in. If it makes more people happy, make Sphinx optional.

However, the arguments you're making aren't helpful to your view.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 20, 2021)

Jose said:


> (Snip a bunch of off-topic whining about amateurish system building.)
> 
> None of those things are in any way related to the topic of this thread, so the question remains, why are you here?
> Are you really interested in Freebsd as a viable desktop operating system?
> Or do you want to spread a bunch of FUD about how much it sucks?


I don't think you even understand what you are talking about.
Everything I said is related.

I already use FreeBSD as a secondary desktop. Thank you.

Quality of development tools drive platform adoption, not the other way around.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 20, 2021)

sidetone said:


> SR_Ind
> I get some of what you're saying. I once pointed out that 14 hours of additional build time was excessive, to simply add a GCC compiler, and they fixed that. I use the same kind of logic to point out inefficiencies. It has gotten much better. However, also there's some funny stuff when trying to upgrade a program, and seeing the amount of programs that need to be deinstalled, and reinstalled. Trying to untangle this is difficult.
> 
> Only shell and C are more universal as a language than Python, so I am completely good with Python. Lua probably matches Python in terms of how universal they are. I was thinking of Sphinx being optional, it can be, but it is so essential, I would rather leave it in. If it makes more people happy, make Sphinx optional.
> ...


The official installer from CMake for Windows doesn't seem to have any python dependency. 
That's the official installer.
IIRC it is there in Linux however (have to check that on a Debian based SBC).
So, from where does this whole kitchen sink approach has encroached the FOSS world, I have no logical explanation.


----------



## sidetone (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> The official installer from CMake for Windows doesn't seem to have any python dependency.
> That's the official installer.
> IIRC it is there in Linux however (have to check that on a Debian based SBC).
> So, from where does this whole kitchen sink approach has encroached the FOSS world, I have no logical explanation.


Python is needed for Sphinx documentation. That might be all it's needed for with cmake. A mathematical scripting language is expected to be highly efficient.


SR_Ind said:


> I always install ports with examples and docs turned off. Why should I have to look into Makefiles?


Makefiles are the best way to figure things out and improve things.


----------



## SR_Ind (Jun 20, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> It is expected a FreeBSD user can use `pkg install` to trivially add this stuff. It will never be in the base install because it doesn't make sense for so many use-cases of FreeBSD.
> 
> As a C developer, you should also probably realize the issue with Qt and non-standard MOC for an OS primarily focussing on C. The very fact we have a C++ compiler in base is "luck".


I hear you.
Nowadays, I use minimal Qt for GUI development only. And that's my only use for C++.
I can't wrestle with ABI incompatibilities, whims of compilers. And and top of that the standards committee has embarked on very rapid refresh cycle. Not sustainable.

All said and done, other GUI toolkits in the *NIX world cannot compete with Windows and Mac OS. Not fair, but that's what it is.


----------



## bakul (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Forget about desktop on FreeBSD.
> 
> Is FreeBSD run by sane people in the first place?
> 
> ...


While some of your criticism may be valid, this is the nature of open source, volunteer driven projects. You can complain all you want but that won't fix anything.

If you want to make a real difference, get involved. Write code, write documentation, test/review stuff, port software, rationally argue your point of view about some relevant topic, promote FreeBSD (or open source s/w you care about) in your workplace, get others interested in OSS projects, etc. etc. In the process you will learn many new things, improve your coding, writing and communication skills, make new friends, earn the respect of your peers etc. These things will even help when you look for your next job or consulting gig!


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Desktop is simple, if and only if FreeBSD adopts a GUI/Widget/WM stack as the first class citizen. Just bundle Qt GUI and Widgets in the base system with a bare bone window manager with a set of configuration tools.
> But the catch here is that no developer will spend their time to build these simple GUI tools, if the underlying OS has somewhat sub par hardware support.


The catch is the vast majority of people who use FreeBSD do not want a bundle of "Qt GUI and Widgets in the base system with a bare bone window manager".


SR_Ind said:


> Chicken and egg situation.


Exactly.



SR_Ind said:


> I build my desktop from scratch. I use my desktop for development work.
> I don't require Python and any of the interpreted runtimes.
> 
> If I start changing the Makefiles that came with the ports, then it will bring the whole question of using the ports.


I'm glad to hear you build your desktops from scratch and use ports. That's my preference as well. 

Then you know how to work through the problems you refer to with python 2.7, what you do and what you do not want on your system.

But please don't try to force what you want on your system on mine with a Qt GUI, Widgets and a bare bone WM in the Base System. 
I know what programs I do and do not want on my desktops/laptops, too.


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 20, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> All said and done, other GUI toolkits in the *NIX world cannot compete with Windows and Mac OS. Not fair, but that's what it is.


Absolutely. However I wonder if we had great UI experiences, would this not detract from UNIX where the command prompt is the first class citizen?

Whilst it may be up for debate which is more efficient (CLI or GUI), what isn't really up for debate is whether we need more GUI platforms. We have tonnes of them. Why would we damage and reduce the number of CLI platforms to add yet another weak GUI platform to the world?


----------



## a6h (Jun 21, 2021)

If you single me out, the rest are sane. Now, what's your point? Meh! Never mind.
↑


SR_Ind said:


> Is FreeBSD run by *sane *people in the first place?


↓


SR_Ind said:


> does this forum has any rule against uncalled for *insults*.


↓
It just doesn't add up.



SR_Ind said:


> WiFi is *iffy *even with well known drivers.


I don't know about _iffy,_ but I knew _Fifi_.


----------



## eternal_noob (Jun 21, 2021)

In my opinion, this thread should be closed since it attracts trolls like no other one.
In addition, the topic is stupid.


----------



## mark_j (Jun 21, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Whoa. Seems like a lot of ruffled feathers. Sincerest apologies if it meant personally to some of you.
> 
> Maybe this was wrong thread to complain about (sharing my frustration) about the state of radio interfaces in FreeBSD.



Actually any thread is the wrong thread to complain about hardware drivers. You need to go the mailing lists. 

You may have a problem with bluetooth, so be it, but when you open your message with:



> Forget about desktop on FreeBSD.
> 
> Is FreeBSD run by sane people in the first place?
> 
> I just reformatted a hard disk that was running the latest FreeBSD.



you're just attacking users here. It's uncalled for, and a stupid approach to attempting to engage in conversation.



SR_Ind said:


> FreeBSD is better suited for embedded space.
> It will take a fraction of effort to get state of the art radio networking capabilities in FreeBSD.



You're kidding, right? Have you looked at the bluetooth specification?
You realise Linux got theirs from Qualcomm, where a swag of programmers (paid programmers) produced it then open sourced it?

Seriously, if it's so easy, knock yourself out. I can point you to the correct people to speak to if you wish and get you started on the project?



SR_Ind said:


> Unfortunately, that effort doesn't come cheap. Radio networking stack development is less common skill.
> No idea what are the funding priorities of the FreeBSD foundation.



The "effort" is neither easy or cheap.

You are correct that there is a total disconnect between the foundation and its users. Absolute. 
It's not a presence here or anywhere (such as mailing lists) and takes its cues solely from core, it seems. 
I believe they attempt to gauge user requirements through the annual survey. Nothing much has ever come of it, in my opinion. It took ages for them to fund 802.11ac.
I surmise their funding approach is aimed at the large benefactors.



SR_Ind said:


> Desktop will remain a shifting goalpost, unless the approach changes.
> Desktop is simple, if and only if FreeBSD adopts a GUI/Widget/WM stack as the first class citizen. Just bundle Qt GUI and Widgets in the base system with


That is never happening (well, OK, it did sort of with Xorg in base). FreeBSD is not a "distribution" cobbled together by someone, it's an integrated system where they give you that base OS and everything to function in it. If you want to add stuff to it, then you use ports and/or packages. If you don't want to put in that effort, then you can use a derivation like GhostBSD.



SR_Ind said:


> a bare bone window manager with a set of configuration tools.
> But the catch here is that no developer will spend their time to build these simple GUI tools, if the underlying OS has somewhat sub par hardware support.


So, it has average to poor support for wifi and bluetooth and this is a reason not to use a GUI with FreeBSD? Fine, then install Windows 10 or systemd/linux and move on. 
Life's short, too short to be annoyed about an OS.


----------



## kpedersen (Jun 21, 2021)

mark_j said:


> You are correct that there is a total disconnect between the foundation and its users. Absolute.
> It's not a presence here or anywhere (such as mailing lists) and takes its cues solely from core, it seems.
> I believe they attempt to gauge user requirements through the annual survey. Nothing much has ever come of it, in my opinion. It took ages for them to fund 802.11ac.
> I surmise their funding approach is aimed at the large benefactors.


You seem to not be thrilled by the foundation.

I do possibly agree with you in that they don't really seem to be acting for their "little" users. Though oddly enough this kind of has been a saving grace because users don't really know what they want and ask for dumb things like GUI installers or default desktop environments. At least with the foundation completely ignoring us and going for what (probably Netflix) wants, it ensures FreeBSD stays competitive in important areas.

It is a little weird though. Perhaps the discussion and reasoning is on a specific mailing list.


----------



## Menelkir (Jun 21, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> You seem to not be thrilled by the foundation.
> 
> I do possibly agree with you in that they don't really seem to be acting for their "little" users. Though oddly enough this kind of has been a saving grace because users don't really know what they want and ask for dumb things like GUI installers or default desktop environments. At least with the foundation completely ignoring us and going for what (probably Netflix) wants, it ensures FreeBSD stays competitive in a few areas.
> 
> It is a little weird though. Perhaps the discussion and reasoning is on a specific mailing list.


I think the foundation is more turned into the core of FreeBSD than anything else that resides in ports, since the core is the most important part for everyone.


----------



## sidetone (Jun 21, 2021)

mark_j said:


> You're kidding, right? Have you looked at the bluetooth specification?
> You realise Linux got theirs from Qualcomm, where a swag of programmers (paid programmers) produced it then open sourced it?


I would be happy with having that in ports, no matter if it's GPL. Just to have the functionality. It doesn't have to be Bluetooth, just something where I could use 1 wifi usb stick with multiple devices.


----------



## a6h (Jun 21, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> I do possibly agree with you in that they don't really seem to be acting for their "little" users.





Menelkir said:


> I think the foundation is more turned into the core of FreeBSD than anything else that resides in ports, since the core is the most important part for everyone.



My take on it: in projects, source and its quality are essential, i.e. committers. Without committers, there's no source, hence no project.

The rest are auxiliary, they come and go. Their policies and statements have an effect, but it’s limited. They can improve or destroy a project. In worst case scenario, the latter can lead to fork, e.g. _NetBSD->OpenBSD and FreeBSD->DragonFly BSD_.

They're mainly a legal front, hopefully PR, and a mean to attract more capital. Capital is important. People have to eat! But a project can hold hostage by its investors. They can and will dictate policies, sometime through delicate peer pressure. But they don't have full control over a good working project. Good committers produce good code/project, and eventually, building up a happy user base. Happy users can save a project, even in the face of strong foreign forces. It's not a myth, e.g. _OpenBSD and DARPA funding_.

In some systems, the leader is the system, e.g. FSF. Take him/her out and the system is over. OS is not an organisation. It's code, and depends on merits of its committers. If someone is not fond of management, he/she still can supports the project itself, by supporting its committers.


----------



## sidetone (Jun 21, 2021)

The base is great. It's better than any other operating system. That everything from big contributors and companies goes into it doesn't negatively affect anything.

The ports tree is good. There's room for improvement, and there are too many project suites in it, some are owned by project entities. The ports tree is heavily leaned towards heavy desktop use, and it affects everything. The committers are great and do a good job. No one understands how it can be better. I think of making a port with different options for default packages, and I'm told, I don't understand the ports tree.

I used to see something that needed improvement. And then, I was told, it's fine, leave it be. Kind of like fear to adjust it, not seeing how it would be better. Then I made an improvement on it, and they're like, oh, that's better.


----------



## wolffnx (Jun 21, 2021)

I have a taskbar, It counts?


----------



## mark_j (Jun 22, 2021)

kpedersen said:


> You seem to not be thrilled by the foundation.



Well, yes and no. As you rightly point out, the end user often doesn't know what they need. Conversely, often they do. Does that demand a big say in the development of the OS? No.

As I see it with the foundation: Ignore the users, do what we want. Sure, its big benefactors are corporate and that necessarily means they cater for their needs. However, this surely leads to the trap where you just become the operating system arm of Netflix, for example.




kpedersen said:


> I do possibly agree with you in that they don't really seem to be acting for their "little" users. Though oddly enough this kind of has been a saving grace because users don't really know what they want and ask for dumb things like GUI installers or default desktop environments. At least with the foundation completely ignoring us and going for what (probably Netflix) wants, it ensures FreeBSD stays competitive in important areas.



(Firstly, I am talking ONLY about hardware. People wanting a GUI and other non-base software installed by default are using the wrong OS.
I did not make that evident originally, sorry.)

I understand their rationale, I just don't understand the opaque process. If users are not important to them, why do these forums exist? Why did it take them so long to pick up the need for 802.11ac (which is still not working)?

Why, if a user has concern with, for example, Bluetooth, there's not a way to communicate that to "someone"? Does FreeBSD core/foundation even know Bluetooth support is awful? The USB stack is bad and behind the times?  Would they like to fix these?

I am sure the foundation does a great job. I am sure they suck as an interface to the users.

To quote them:


> The Foundation advocates for FreeBSD by promoting FreeBSD at technical conferences and events around the world.
> ...
> *Operating System Improvements:* Providing staff to immediately respond to urgent problems and implement new features and functionality allowing for the innovation and stability you’ve come to rely on.
> ...
> *New User Experience:* Improving the process and documentation for getting new people involved with FreeBSD, and supporting those people as they become integrated into the FreeBSD Community.



Hmmm...


----------



## ralphbsz (Jun 22, 2021)

mark_j said:


> As I see it with the foundation: Ignore the users, do what we want. Sure, its big benefactors are corporate and that necessarily means they cater for their needs. However, this surely leads to the trap where you just become the operating system arm of Netflix, for example.


Reality check: The foundations goal for this year is $1.25M. Current donors are: Over $25K: Facebook and VeriSign. Over $10K up to $25K: Stormshield, Tarsnap, and VMWare. No other large donors to be seen.

Let's check 2020: Over $250K: The Koum Family Foundation (that's the foundation set up by the founder of WhatsApp). $100K-$250K: Arm, NetApp, NGINX. $50K-$100K: NetFlix. $25K-$50K: Juniper. $10K-$25K: Beckhoff, Fidelity Charitable (probably an anonymous donor using a donor-advised funds), Microsoft, Mozilla, Stormshield, Tarsnap, and VMWare.

I don't see any one donor dominating the foundation, in particular not the big three companies that use FreeBSD as the basis of their product (Juniper, NetApp, NetFlix).

Also: Consider the size of the foundation. It's typical annual revenue is $1.1M - $1.5M. The typical cost of an average Silicon Valley software engineer is $250K to $300K (they are somewhat cheaper in other parts of the US, and in developing countries). Even if the foundation spent all of its money on software engineers, they could afford 4-6 of them. In reality, a significant fraction of the income is going to be spent on foundation-internal costs (such as executive director and administrative functions). Anyone who thinks that the FreeBSD foundation can hire enough people to do all the wonderful things (like 802.11xxx for some value of xxx, or Bluetooth) fails the reality check.

In comparison: Annual revenue of the Linux foundation is about $80M to $100M. Of that, a significant fraction goes into things like Linus' Torvalds salary (over $500K), but it still leaves money for hundreds of software engineers. In addition, companies like Intel, IBM, Oracle, AMD, nVidia and in particular RedHat employ hundreds to thousands of Linux developers each.


----------



## Phishfry (Jun 22, 2021)

Thanks ralphbsz for the Tarsnap mention. I think that company and Colin Percival really exemplify FreeBSD.
Here is a guy who is a developer and contributes to FreeBSD in general.
He contributes some corporate profit to the foundation for the project that he volunteers for.
That is over the top. Who else does that. Talk about giving back...


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 22, 2021)

ralphbsz said:


> a significant fraction goes into things like Linus' Torvalds salary (over $500K)


I didn't know he got paid at all! He was working for a chip maker not too long ago.


----------



## bakul (Jun 22, 2021)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I didn't know he got paid at all! He was working for a chip maker not too long ago.



I believe Torvalds left Transmeta in 2003 to work for OSDL. How time flies


----------



## a6h (Jun 22, 2021)

ralphbsz said:


> Reality check: The foundations goal for this year is $1.25M. Current donors are: Over $25K: Facebook and VeriSign. Over $10K up to $25K: Stormshield, Tarsnap, and VMWare. No other large donors to be seen.


What's the cause of low turnout?


----------



## ralphbsz (Jun 22, 2021)

vigole said:


> What's the cause of low turnout?


A: The year is still young.
B: Otherwise, I have no idea.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 22, 2021)

vigole said:


> What's the cause of low turnout?


Typically these companies with the larger contributions wait till the end of the year.


----------



## mark_j (Jun 22, 2021)

ralphbsz said:


> Reality check: The foundations goal for this year is $1.25M. Current donors are: Over $25K: Facebook and VeriSign. Over $10K up to $25K: Stormshield, Tarsnap, and VMWare. No other large donors to be seen.


Sigh. It was an example to make a point.
I never stated all the hardware goals could be met, I am merely asking that what goals are to be met are stated. If there are none, let's hear it.
I certainly wasn't comparing FreeBSD to Linux so I don't know where that came from.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jun 22, 2021)

mark_j said:


> … the foundation does a great job. …



Yes.


----------



## Sevendogsbsd (Jun 22, 2021)

6502 said:


> I am not sure for this at least with browser comparison. If I remove Windows, install BSD/Linux and run the web browser - it is obviously slower than on Windows. Probably the reason is in Xorg (GUI). I have not tested Wayland yet, maybe it will make browser faster.


I hate adding to a controversial thread but this is not my experience at all. In my experience, Linux is the fastest, then FreeBSD, then Windows. The exception is my home Gaming box, which is on par with both Linux and FreeBSD. My work laptop, which is Windows 10 Enterprise and on an enormous AD domain, is beyond slow, I mean molasses slow. 4 core i7, 16GB ram and it takes a full 15 minutes after boot for the drive light to stop and not be pegged at 100% drive utilization. After that it's the normal O365 crashes and slowness, then the OS is at least useable but it is in no way comparable to either Linux or FreeBSD in terms of speed.

Again, that's my experience.


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jun 22, 2021)

Booting linux is certainly faster than booting FreeBSD. As for the desktop I don't feel a speed-difference in both.
FreeBSD is used alot in servers and servers don't get booted very often. The simplicity and reliability of rc init comes at the price of booting-time.


----------



## Sevendogsbsd (Jun 22, 2021)

Alain De Vos said:


> Booting linux is certainly faster than booting FreeBSD. As for the desktop I don't feel a speed-difference in both.
> FreeBSD is used alot in servers and servers don't get booted very often. The simplicity and reliability of rc init comes at the price of booting-time.


I normally am only concerned about desktops and not about boot time. My Windows 10 gaming box boots in about 10 seconds, but it's running on an nvme drive so very fast. Linux and FreeBSD both booted reasonably fast on SSD on the same box. My work laptop is spinning rust so I understand it boots slowly, but boot is not the slowness on it - even after booting, the drive activity stays at 100% for at least 10 minutes. There is some enterprise/AD/McAfee madness going on there that just drags it down to being nearly unusable for a few minutes. I guess not entirely Windows fault. Wait, did I just say that out loud?


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jun 22, 2021)

Yes you should say it loud. Booting is FreeBSD for me a bit slow because i have to setup a ppp-connection and because of the slow detection of my external USB drives.


----------



## hardworkingnewbie (Jun 22, 2021)

Alain De Vos said:


> Booting linux is certainly faster than booting FreeBSD. As for the desktop I don't feel a speed-difference in both.
> FreeBSD is used alot in servers and servers don't get booted very often. The simplicity and reliability of rc init comes at the price of booting-time.


Actually having *not *to deal with systemd, its baroque "grab and reinvent everything" approach land security implications is one major selling point for some companies to switch from Linux to FreeBSD.

As can be read here, this was featured a while on the FreeBSD home page ago: https://www.synergysky.com/blog/whydidwebuildoursolutionontopof_freebsd


----------



## scottro (Jun 22, 2021)

Each of us has their own opinion. If you feel that boot speed is a reason to choose one system over another, then you should probably use Linux. I'd go further and say VoidLinux, in text mode, is really fast. I don't have Windows on bare metal, so can't judge it well. I prefer minimal window managers, so my system will run more quickly than say, someone's who is running Gnome.  However, they will have a lot of things set up for them and easier to use.  The question of this whole thread has lots of different answers, because each of us has different needs. I think my doctor, lawyer, if I needed one, and accountant, probably all need Windows. I suspect some of the specialized software they use doesn't even run on Mac. So for them, the apparently silly question of is MacOS good for desktop would have a No answer.  

For me, FreeBSD is fine as a desktop, but on occasion I need Linux for things like, for example, using masterpdfeditor, which fills out pdfs. I wish that were my most difficult problem in my life.


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jun 22, 2021)

Occasionaly i use void-linux


----------



## phalange (Jun 22, 2021)

Alain De Vos said:


> Occasionaly i use void-linux



Me too. It has a pretty impressive startup time. even faster than systemd. But honestly the transition from rust to ssd was the big event. Boot times went from minutes to seconds. These little differences of 15s vs 30s are now fairly meaningless to me.


----------



## mer (Jun 22, 2021)

Boot speed?  I measure my desktop uptimes in months (record is close to a year, on an UPS a power outage in the area killed it) so boot speed is irrelevant to me.  Correct booting is more important than boot speed.

There are variables (loader.conf) that can be set to minimize/limit probing and waiting for USB devices.  If you are not booting from an external USB device you can safely set these.


----------



## Alain De Vos (Jun 22, 2021)

For /boot/loader.conf there is

```
hw.usb.no_boot_wait="1"  # DO NOT WAIT FOR USB DEVICES FOR ROOT (/) FILESYSTEM
```
In /etc/sysctl.conf i have,

```
hw.usb.no_shutdown_wait=1                #No USB device waiting at system shutdown
```


----------



## bsduck (Jun 22, 2021)

I agree with you on Void Linux being fast. Both the boot process and the package manager are the fastest I've ever seen. The first time I tried it I wondered how my HDD had been magically turned into a SSD.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 23, 2021)

SR_Ind said:


> Desktop is simple, if and only if FreeBSD adopts a GUI/Widget/WM stack as the first class citizen. Just bundle Qt GUI and Widgets in the base system with a bare bone window manager with a set of configuration tools.


And immediately tick off over half the user base who doesn't like whatever is selected. Better idea: let the user decide and let the user install what he wants. This ain't no platform for kids.


----------



## Menelkir (Jun 23, 2021)

drhowarddrfine said:


> And immediately tick off over half the user base who doesn't like whatever is selected. Better idea: let the user decide and let the user install what he wants. This ain't no platform for kids.


A lot of people thinks that a server should reflect their own desktop, and that's why you see a lot of servers with a full fledged desktop installed without a particular reason. So they usually think that instead of having a simple and clean install for <put any scenario here> and install only what you need, you should ditch a huge bloat there just because "you have storage space, who cares? It works pretty well on my (bloated) desktop!".


----------



## a6h (Jun 23, 2021)

Windows boot time is fast, because "fast startup" is enabled by default. Turn it off, or `powercfg /h off` and we're going to have the good old day Windows, i.e. without SSD you have to wait for 5-10 minutes (depending on age of installation) to see Windows stop crunching the HDD!

_Some background on how windows speed things up:_

*Prefetcher [Folder] (since XP)*
It watches boot processes, program launch and NTFS MFT, and saves/record them as Hashed log/trace files in the %WINDIR%\Prefetch. Next time it caches them into RAM for faster boot time and next programs' launch.
Fun fact: US Patented by Microsoft

*Sysmain (since XP)*
Prefetch (XP) aka Superfetch (Vista) aka Sysmain (Windows 10)
It's an extension to the Prefetcher (Since Vista), and Preloads frequently used programs into RAM

*ReadyBoost aka EMD (since Vista)*
It relies on Sysmain to turn NAND into a cache between HDD and RAM.

*Fast Startup (since Windows 8)*
Fast Startup aka Hiberboot
It closes all programs, log off the user, and save the state (kernel and drivers) from RAM to the hiberfil.sys.
The result is a half-ass hibernation. It requires BIOS/UEFI firmware support. It can cause problems too:
* No multi-boot
* No BIOS access
* WoL anomalies
* Creating/working with RAM-disk

_There's two types of hibernation:_
* Full hibernation: It creates a large hiberfil.sys -- at least 40% of physical memory (HiberFileSizePercent >= 40)
`powercfg /h /type full`
* Reduced hibernation (minimum requirement for Fast Startup to work): Smaller hiberfil.sys -- at least 20% of physical memory (HiberFileSizePercent < 40)
`powercfg /h /type reduced`


----------



## Beastie7 (Jun 23, 2021)

One thing I absolutely love about Windows..

..It has working WiFi.

*airhorns*


----------



## sidetone (Jun 23, 2021)

Menelkir said:


> A lot of people thinks that a server should reflect their own desktop, and that's why you see a lot of servers with a full fledged desktop installed without a particular reason. So they usually think that instead of having a simple and clean install for <put any scenario here> and install only what you need, you should ditch a huge bloat there just because "you have storage space, who cares? It works pretty well on my (bloated) desktop!".


Performance issues, and time wasted compiling which they fail to realize. More efficient port dependencies means much easier maintenance.


----------



## grahamperrin@ (Jun 23, 2021)

Menelkir said:


> … servers with a full fledged desktop …



For me, those were Mac OS X Server 10.0 (with Mac OS X largely the reason for my presence here, although I never introduced myself) and before that, AppleShare IP 5.0.


----------



## Beastie7 (Jun 23, 2021)

Having a GUI on a server does aid in learning the system and it's way of administration. There's a reason why SUN hired Debian founder to layout a decent Gnome2 port on OpenSolaris.


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## Alain De Vos (Jun 23, 2021)

There exist also a headless Windows.


----------



## mer (Jun 23, 2021)

Alain De Vos said:


> There exist also a headless Windows.


Called "Shutters"?


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## Menelkir (Jun 23, 2021)

Beastie7 said:


> Having a GUI on a server does aid in learning the system and it's way of administration.


A server shouldn't be used as a learning system. A spare machine should be used for that, and in that way, in fact you should install everything you want for learning purposes. 
Specially today when there's a lot of ways to do that (virtual machines, chroot, jails, etc).


----------



## mer (Jun 23, 2021)

Menelkir said:


> A server shouldn't be used as a learning system.


"Oops, sorry the intern deleted the production database.  Sorry we lost all your stock trades and you're now worth $0.00"


----------



## Beastie7 (Jun 23, 2021)

Menelkir said:


> A spare machine should be used for that



And what is that spare machine? A server.

Non-argument. Whether it's production or not isn't the point. 

If you were to tell a new coming sysadmin to setup a three node HAST/CARP cluster, and to authenticate those servers via SSH keys; it'll be a lot easier for one to just open up a few terminal windows and go to town instead of having to fiddle with tmux in a tty session. If a graphical server was so idiotic, Red Hat would've removed the option altogether a long time ago. It's certaintly not favorable to veterans, but it helps mere mortals.


----------



## sidetone (Jun 23, 2021)

A lot of server functions that FreeBSD has is covered by TrueNAS.

Without a desktop and desktop applications on FreeBSD, the ports tree is very efficient. For desktop applications, it can't get much improved as it is.

The user base for FreeBSD desktop is small, which it seems that a fraction of it uses the forums.

There's also a lot of reluctance in favor of using old ways. For instance, there's the common saying of << just get a Postscript printer and use lpr >>. CUPS can be slimmed down and used like lpr, while supporting way more printers. There's also a lot of wanting to keep full compatibility with a full Gnome desktop for minor features.

Also, I realized that BSD and Apache implementations aren't going far, unless companies provide the bulk of that effort. BSD operating systems working together for implementations can make that go a long way.

We'll get Linux implementations for programs in ports. This benefit from GNU/Linux implementations will be limited to use on top of BSD, which is fine in lots of cases. BSD and Apache implementations can be absorbed by GNU implementations, while BSD and Apache implementations can't get additional benefits from GPL implementations. We're stuck with Avahi for Zeroconf, and we're stuck with Doxygen for documentation. If I understood how to make Zeroconf work, I would attempt to fix it. I read about it, and understand a lot about it, but using it, and being able to configure it is another story. I also don't understand whether Sphinx is working. I also wish to build more ports with BSDmake, but I don't have the understanding to do that all the time when errors pop up.

FreeBSD is more efficient than Linux, but Linux/GNU has slightly more capabilities. The desktop is really multiple duplicate implementations on top of BSD. The current desktop on FreeBSD is still pretty good. Also, what other opensource OS offers so many choices for user-end ports/packages, without being Debian/Ubuntu?

At least when LLVM/Clang become more developed, there will be a lot of resources to go into improving the next thing on FreeBSD. There were a few major improvements in the last decade, like getting improved graphic card support and getting another implementation of a compiler/toolchain.

On my system, when I upgrade a port, I'll get my whole screen resolution rearranged. It still works, and is fully usable, it's just that with two monitors, my background sizing is altered from what I had. It shows that programs/ports/packages need to have separations, so they aren't tangled up.


----------



## dj015 (Jul 4, 2021)

sidetone said:


> We'll get Linux implementations for programs in ports. This benefit from GNU/Linux implementations will be limited to use on top of BSD, which is fine in lots of cases. BSD and Apache implementations can be absorbed by GNU implementations, while BSD and Apache implementations can't get additional benefits from GPL implementations. We're stuck with Avahi for Zeroconf, and we're stuck with Doxygen for documentation. If I understood how to make Zeroconf work, I would attempt to fix it. I read about it, and understand a lot about it, but using it, and being able to configure it is another story. I also don't understand whether Sphinx is working. I also wish to build more ports with BSDmake, but I don't have the understanding to do that all the time when errors pop up.


This sounds interesting. What are you using Zeroconf for?



sidetone said:


> At least when LLVM/Clang become more developed, there will be a lot of resources to go into improving the next thing on FreeBSD. There were a few major improvements in the last decade, like getting improved graphic card support and getting another implementation of a compiler/toolchain.


Oh the improvements to the FreeBSD desktop in the last decade _went far beyond graphics cards and compilers_:

Support for many mobile data dongles got added (sadly you still have to dial them from the command line with no network manager).
ZFS got added to bsdinstall, we became able to boot from ZFS, and there were various boot improvements.
Our ext2fs filesystem got many bugfixes and improvements, and does ext3 and ext4 filesystems too now.
the kernel stopped crashing when mounting write-protected filesystems.
multimedia/webcamd got 352+ Linux webcam drivers working on FreeBSD, and gained support for 32 bit clients on 64 bit kernels, allowing Windows apps running on Wine to capture video. Many other Linux drivers, particularly for USB devices, could also be made to work on FreeBSD this way.
The brilliant little sysutils/bsdisks project independently reimplemented the (Linux-only) udisks API, exposing drives, partitions, and filesystems over D-Bus, thus letting USB drives be mounted and unmounted on GNOME, KDE and XFCE, all without udisks and systemd. But it went even further, using that API to expose FreeBSD-only functionality, such as supporting ZFS volumes. Yes, you can now mount ZFS from within your Gnome Files / Konqueror / Thunar file managers, something even udisks on Linux doesn't do.
Our FUSE support improved, although a great deal of further work remains with its many Linuxisms, and GVFS sadly still can't expose its virtual filesystem over FUSE (which would allow transparently opening remote/virtual files in any local application, over ordinary POSIX APIs).
Wine improved tremendously, and its FreeBSD support is almost as good as its Linux support now. Even Cygwin, which uses undocumented NTDLL APIs and requires precise memory layout, and which used to only work on Linux, installs and runs well on FreeBSD too now. People are using Wine spinoffs like Proton on FreeBSD to game.
Java, .NET Core, Node.js, and probably many more runtimes, all got ported, upgraded, and improved.
Tons of Ports got added, including really difficult ones like Electron.js apps.
Several desktop-focused FreeBSD projects like FuryBSD and helloSystem came about. Sadly few survived, but some of their work went into Ports and carried on, for example we got a minimal network manager for Wi-Fi (net-mgmt/wifimgr).
We got hardware accelerated encryption (AES-NI) in GELI.
VirtualBox stopped crashing the kernel, and I've never really seen VirtualBox Guest Extensions go wrong on FreeBSD while they disastrously crippled VMs on Linux at least twice.
Recently kqueue got patched to allow monitoring for file changes without locking volumes and stopping them from umounting.
There were plenty more, I don't always follow the development closely, but every quarterly report from the FreeBSD Foundation is full of exciting news.
Don't get me wrong, there is plenty I'd still like to see. I could fill pages with bugs and wanted features. But major improvements have already been made, and it's been great watching FreeBSD grow and contributing where I can.

And I haven't even been using FreeBSD for 10 years - that list of improvements is from the last 7-8 years .

Let's hear from the rest of you. How has the FreeBSD desktop improved for you over the last decade?




sidetone said:


> On my system, when I upgrade a port, I'll get my whole screen resolution rearranged. It still works, and is fully usable, it's just that with two monitors, my background sizing is altered from what I had. It shows that programs/ports/packages need to have separations, so they aren't tangled up.


Explain that a bit better please. Which port messes up your screen resolution?


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## sidetone (Jul 5, 2021)

dj015
I haven't been able to use Zeroconf. I wanted to try it with a printer. I've gotten a lot of understanding on setting a printer up, but I haven't figured out the next steps of putting it on it's own IP on a LAN that's not localhost. I also haven't understood setting up Zeroconf.

ext3 and ext4 capability is definitely a benefit. I've tried them before, and I've heard it's gotten better since then.

By FreeBSD 13.1, at least we may not have to update Clang to the latest build every time we update something like Firefox, Thunderbird or something related to Xorg.

As for the improvements related to Linux, there's plenty of unnecessary duplication in ports. Why can't there just be 1 to 4 sound systems of OSS, Sndio, Portaudio, and Jack, then everything else that's Linux directly use that, instead of Alsa or PulseAudio. They say they need Linux audio systems, to get multi-mixing or being able to record sound to another application, which, there needs to be a better way that is both simple and satisfies that without needing Linux sound application junk. Why is there an additional port for something that's a duplicate of another port, which is named Linux? It's excess, let the end user Linux program work directly on top of the already existing BSD implementation. Part of the problem is that ports are centered around the Gnome desktop, which is just piled on software.

If this gets out of the way, less computer processing power goes way further. If this happens: there would be less bugs, due to less duplication of software, it would be easier to find bugs, and the poor guy who asks for hardware donations to build ports will need way less hardware while building ports faster.


dj015 said:


> Explain that a bit better please. Which port messes up your screen resolution?


I don't remember. It's anything that updates any part of Xorg. It may have been Firefox, Thunderbird, a video game, something that relied on SDL, a port that I updated due to it getting a Vulnxml warning, or one of those graphical programs that didn't need a lot of dependencies, but added them anyway.


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## grahamperrin@ (Jul 5, 2021)

dj015 said:


> the kernel stopped crashing when mounting write-protected filesystems.



That was a fairly huge fix, IMHO (I wasn't aware of the upstream bug when I raised what was probably the same issue in the TrueOS Core area). Far deeper than a paper cut, it was the type of bug that taught me to never trust FreeBSD with a camera. A shame, at the time. Whenever my day job required me to use a camcorder or camera with a computer, I'd quietly slip away to a place where Microsoft Windows could be used.

I wonder whether this fix was ever in a release note …


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## grahamperrin@ (Jan 3, 2022)

dj015 said:


> … I've never really seen VirtualBox Guest Extensions go wrong on FreeBSD …



FreeBSD bug 254412 (kernel panics, at boot time, of FreeBSD guests) condensed: 


```
… the breakage is somewhere in this code:

Sleeping thread (tid 100099, pid 155) owns a non-sleepable lock
KDB: stack backtrace of thread 100099:
#0 0xffffffff80c166f1 at mi_switch+0xc1
#1 0xffffffff8233cf37 at rtR0SemEventMultiBsdWait+0x297
#2 0xffffffff8231d36a at vgdrvHgcmAsyncWaitCallbackWorker+0x14a
#3 0xffffffff8231e49b at VbglR0HGCMInternalConnect+0x11b
#4 0xffffffff8231ad33 at VGDrvCommonIoCtl+0xb53
#5 0xffffffff82319af6 at VGDrvCommonProcessOptionsFromHost+0x146
#6 0xffffffff8231d9f8 at vgdrvFreeBSDAttach+0x1d8
#7 0xffffffff80c4670d at device_attach+0x3dd
```



dj015 said:


> Let's hear from the rest of you. How has the FreeBSD desktop improved for you over the last decade?



*Many and varied improvements*, particularly over the past … year or two, I guess. YMMV; CURRENT sort of gets me the best of the best _much_ sooner than it can reach users of RELEASE.

I'm surprised that I didn't previously mention *graphics i.e. DRM*. 

On the *Plasma* side of things: enhancements and fixes never fail to impress me. 

*Firefox* is just excellent. Huge credit to the many developers on the Tier-1 side; _massive_ credit to the much smaller group of maintainers of the Tier-3 port to FreeBSD. 

Last but not least: the *FreeBSD Foundation*. Not just the increased investment, from which desktop/laptop users are reaping the benefits; there's smart communication, coordination and so on. Hats off.


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## Argentum (Jan 3, 2022)

grahamperrin said:


> Last but not least: the *FreeBSD Foundation*. Not just the increased investment, from which desktop/laptop users are reaping the benefits; there's smart communication, coordination and so on. Hats off.
> 
> View attachment 12513


Done! Small amount, but this is my third year doing this.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 3, 2022)

I brought this up last year and gave an update in Off Topic a few days ago. 

If you purchase things on Amazon through smile.amazon.com, you can select FreeBSD for charitable contributions. A percentage of your purchase is given by Amazon to the FreeBSD Foundation. 

This last quarter's contribution was $900. It costs you nothing to do this.


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## tingo (Jan 5, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> It costs you nothing to do this.


Other than the price you pay to Amazon, of course.


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## grahamperrin@ (Jan 5, 2022)

18th November:



grahamperrin said:


> Nine percent, that needs some more love.



5th January: `> 101%`
​*Goal!*​


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## Argentum (Jan 8, 2022)

grahamperrin said:


> 18th November:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Cool! But do I understand correctly that this goal was for last year? We have a new year, so probably also a new goal...


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## grahamperrin@ (Jan 8, 2022)

Argentum said:


> … a new year, so probably also a new goal...



A wild guess: the goal for 2022 will be expressed after the status report appears for the fourth quarter of 2021. 






						FreeBSD Foundation Quarterly Status Reports | FreeBSD Foundation
					

2021 Status Reports Quarter 1 Quarter 2 Quarter 3 Quarter 4 2020 Status Reports Quarter 1 Quarter 2 Quarter 3 2019 Status Reports Quarter 1 Quarter 2 Quarter 3 Quarter 4




					freebsdfoundation.org


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