# GNOME goes PC-BSD



## vanessa (Oct 13, 2013)

GNOME is going the PC-BSD way! Its developers are planning to implement sandboxing like the PBI package format. 

So why not just move to PC-BSD and abandon Linux altogether? Recently they've received only negative critics about the GNOME Shell from the Linux community.


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## cpm@ (Oct 13, 2013)

Have you tried the MATE desktop? As another desktop environment forked from GNOME 2, it's very complete. Although, its Linux version is better because it has actually more packages by default, in fact, all these missing applications could be ported to FreeBSD. His first developer, @mezz@, is doing great work over this. Now he is busy with other stuff, but hopefully when MATE 1.8 release is ready (according to MATE's roadmap the date is unknown) he will start to port it again.

Also, here you have a thread related to installing the MATE desktop on PC-BSD.

For details, see the following links:

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=29727
https://github.com/jlmess77/mate-ports/


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## vanessa (Oct 14, 2013)

Personally I don't actively use PC-BSD but have one installation for reference purposes. PC-BSD's development is remarkable as it incorporates some very interesting concepts (pc-systeminstall, the radical move to ZFS, the PBI packaging or the mere merciless development pace).  

We install and maintain FreeBSD Desktops for customers with either GNOME or KDE. However, as long as some key problems are not solved (Optimus, ACPI) I still rely on OS X for the everyday work on my MacBook - probably like many people in this forum.

I am interested in GNOME 3 because it has much in common with Windows 8. As people move more and more to it, it would be easier to convince them to switch to FreeBSD with GNOME 3, as it looks more 'modern' than GNOME 2 or KDE. As for MATE, yes I tested it, but it is not my WE.


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## kpedersen (Oct 14, 2013)

The PBI system is actually pretty cool because it allows all dependencies to be stored with individual applications in a neat self contained prefix.

What GNOME 3 obviously plans to do is create an "App" system like iOS, Android and Metro. This is not really the same thing as PBI and is going to be really gimmicky and horrid. No doubt the apps would need GNOME 3 specific code to fit in with the system which means that there won't be that many apps because quite frankly not many developers (or users) actually use GNOME 3. Think of this more like a glorified KDE plasma widgets.

Has GNOME 3 ever run on a tablet yet?


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## fluca1978 (Oct 14, 2013)

vanessa said:
			
		

> So why not just move to PC-BSD and abandon Linux altogether? Recently they've received only negative critics about the Gnome Shell from the Linux community.



I don't see this happening in the near or far future: GNOME is so much Linux-tied that abandoning such platform will cause a revolution.

Anyway, the idea seems to me to provide a kind of app store, rather than creating a new *L*inux packaging.


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## vanessa (Oct 14, 2013)

Don't know - never tried it on a tablet. 

As I understand it, the concept and the main advantage of the 'sandboxed' apps is that every piece of software comes with all the needed libraries compiled-in, which guarantees that it will run on the target system in all circumstances. This is a huge advantage for end users, who have zero knowledge of computers and even more valuable for support staff keeping their phones 'call-free'.


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## da1 (Oct 14, 2013)

vanessa said:
			
		

> So why not just move to PC-BSD and abandon Linux altogether?



Lennart Poettering style ?


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## kpedersen (Oct 14, 2013)

vanessa said:
			
		

> So why not just move to PC-BSD and abandon Linux altogether? Recently they've received only negative critics about the Gnome Shell from the Linux community.



Because we don't want it 

Gnome Shell has received negative critic from the Linux community (including less technical users) because it is flawed and awkward to use.


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## cpm@ (Oct 14, 2013)

da1 said:
			
		

> Lennart Poettering style ?



Oh, yes! It's quite hard to forget his declarations about FreeBSD health status. (A big laugh) it's impossible to believe that's still alive :e

Despite it's an old personal opinion, he keeps it today or tomorrow, I don't care. I don't trust any assertion/declaration/opinion written by hands of this kind of people (Poettering & friends) regarding FreeBSD status. Their envy is obvious (can be safely ignored forever) and for this reason  it doesn't deserves to be taken into account. Just my 2 cents 

PS. I try to be honest.


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## da1 (Oct 14, 2013)

I have a tough time getting over it myself.


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## zspider (Oct 16, 2013)

cpm said:
			
		

> Oh, yes! It's quite hard to forget his declarations about FreeBSD health status. (A big laugh) it's impossible to believe that still alive :e
> 
> Despite it's an old personal opinion, he keeps it today or tomorrow, I don't care. I don't trust any assertion/declaration/opinion written by hands of this kind of people (Poettering & friends) regarding FreeBSD status. Their envy is obvious (can be safely ignored forever) and for this reason  it doesn't deserves to be taken into account. Just my 2 cents
> 
> PS. I try to be honest.



They're envious because Linux has lost sight of its original intent and turned into a mess. Say no to poettering-warez.


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

zspider said:
			
		

> They're envious because Linux has lost sight of it's original intent and turned into a mess. Say no to poettering-warez.



I Agree. I don't intend to convince anyone about to use or not use Linux, but I have one thing very clear: Say no to Poettering's code


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## kpedersen (Oct 16, 2013)

zspider said:
			
		

> Say no to poettering-warez





			
				cpm said:
			
		

> Say no to Poettering's code



I suggest we say no to Poettering full-stop. We don't want him breaking our lovely manpages or handbook once we deny him access to our code 

I can imagine it now:



			
				Poettering said:
			
		

> Wouldn't it be innovative and cool if the FreeBSD handbook was converted to a MySQL database which can then be queried with SQL. We want this to be accessible right from the start, so much of MySQL should be added to the core kernel...


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

It's quite reasonable.  I don't mind that brainless people as Poettering and friends can lucubrate. All of them are gossips 

Bah! I prefer to stop the game. I'm sorry for the noise.


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## kpa (Oct 16, 2013)

I hope you're just joking/trolling. The BSD license explicitly allows anyone including Mr. Pottering to take "our code" and modify it and re-release in the form they wish as long as the original copyright notice is intact.


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## kpedersen (Oct 16, 2013)

Can't FreeBSD instead use the BSD 3-Clause with Poettering Exception License?



			
				kpa said:
			
		

> I hope you're just joking/trolling


Yes, I am only kidding. Since the guy hasn't ever engineered software I actually appreciate, I am more than happy to let him carry on. Practice makes perfect after all.

As for gossip. I sure like this recent Bugzilla thread regarding GNOME 3 (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1019405)


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

kpa said:
			
		

> I hope you're just joking/trolling. The BSD license explicitly allows anyone including Mr. Pottering to take "our code" and modify it and re-release in the form they wish as long as the original copyright notice is intact.



His code is very crappy (assertion of past/present/future). Anyway, avoiding forms of linuxism throughout is a goal, don't you think?



			
				kpedersen said:
			
		

> Can't FreeBSD instead use the BSD 3-Clause with Poettering exception License?



Well, this could be an ace in the hole


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## kpa (Oct 16, 2013)

You are just as bad as the fanboys of the opposing camp, I didn't expect FreeBSD users to sink this low so soon.


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

kpa said:
			
		

> You are just as bad as the fanboys of the opposing camp, I didn't expect FreeBSD users to sink this low so soon.



@kpa, please, don't take this as a gossip. I know that criticism to others is a pending subject, not a lost cause.  A bad day can have it either :r


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## kpedersen (Oct 16, 2013)

kpa said:
			
		

> You are just as bad as the fanboys of the opposing camp



I have nothing against Linux. GNOME 3 is an abomination however and it amazes me when people defend its failures. Can I even be a fanboy if I slate a single piece of technology rather than pushing my alternative of choice? (which is CDE or dwm BTW) 

My only fault in this discussion is using Poettering as a face to blame. Really I imagine that a lot of people on the GNOME 3 project have made very bad decisions. Such as:


Making GNOME target Linux only (unportable).
Changing GNOME in such a way to require retraining. Effectively killing GNOME and replacing it with another DE entirely.
Making GNOME so graphically intensive (when open-source 3D support is still poor).
Breaking other projects by making many dependencies GNOME 3 centric (thus unportable).


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

@kpedersen, leaving aside the already known WMs (such as KDE, GNOME and WMs bifurcated of them). Seriously, which one do you recommend to give a try? Of course, you should think of an answer to give for a former user and using only WMs that could be good competitors


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## kpedersen (Oct 16, 2013)

Hmm, a tricky one. Suggesting alternatives is actually not very straight forward. Which is why GNOME 3 annoys me so much 

Well KDE kind of lost its competitiveness as a workstation DE once 4.x came. Xfce 4 and LXDE still don't have all the utilities required for a desktop environment. CDE also lacks a few required utilities in this respect. All the many WMs are not desktop environments (by definition). Newer DEs like MATE or Cinnamon don't seem to have the developer manpower or the userbase at the moment.

So, all in all, I recommend... GNOME 2.


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

Your point of view is very acceptable. Certainly, that GNOME 2 is pretty usable but maybe on Linux. I tried it sometime ago on FreeBSD and I didn't like it anyway. It's to note that it was ported from penguin's code.

As quoted in a ZDNet article about FreeBSDâ€™s desktop efforts (yes, a rather old article).


> One problem that FreeBSD developers have faced is that GNOME developers tend to be focused on Linux, rather than considering other desktop operating systems.



And to top, this recent article about the problem with GNOME 3   that it's focussing on Linux environment (this might interest you, @kpedersen).


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## zspider (Oct 16, 2013)

kpa said:
			
		

> I hope you're just joking/trolling. The BSD license explicitly allows anyone including Mr. Pottering to take "our code" and modify it and re-release in the form they wish as long as the original copyright notice is intact.



Yes he can and he can keep his frankenstein creations on his side of the fence.


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## zspider (Oct 16, 2013)

cpm said:
			
		

> I Agree. I don't intend to convince anyone about to use or not use Linux, but I have one thing very clear: Say no to Poettering's code



I would of have double quoted this in one post, but Opera's clipboard is glitching out. 

I don't think anything good would of come of Linux not being, or ceasing to exist, if people want to use it that's fine, that's their choice, but I'm not going to be PC when it comes to the realities of Linux or Poetter-warez either.


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

zspider said:
			
		

> Yes he can and he can keep his frankenstein creations on his side of the fence.



Nifty post, @zspider. I'll save this _quote_ with your permission. Truly, it was a big LOL :e


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## vanessa (Oct 16, 2013)

It's getting hot here, huh! To come back to the DEs... here is why I started this discussion:

Since last week I am trying to evaluate which is the best DE for FreeBSD - not for me but for a broader audience like the average office guy.

Non-IT people don't care about code quality, they want a nice and usable user interface without glitches or brainless workflows. So I looked at GNOME 2, KDE4 and Xfce4. And they all work sufficiently good, kind of...  but none of them integrate well with FreeBSD. They come with a whole lot of stuff, dozens of dependencies, many of them unwilling to compile. All this is really frustrating! 

The problem is that there are plenty of DEs for Linux and none which is tailored or targeted at FreeBSD. Why are GNOME, KDE, MATE, Xfce, etc. all compelling for the Linux desktop and no one tries to take the empty place on FreeBSD? Whose fault is this? 

If I were the GNOME 3 developers and get so much negative criticism, I would gladly switch to FreeBSD, throw off all the Linux luggage and create a neatly integrated FreeBSD DE. With all valuable wishes and inputs from the BSD community.

Just my 2 cents...


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

Good advocacy for a FreeBSD demand, @vanessa, but it is a mystery today why developers are not interested enough to work on such DEs. The law of supply and demand doesn't work here as it's supposed to usually work. Seems that there are millions of reasons to say "NO".

I guess that developers have to respond to a user's demand(s), but how to do that? Well, being one of them is a good start


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## kpedersen (Oct 16, 2013)

GNOME 2 used to work quite well with FreeBSD around the 7.x era. Then this stuff with dbus etc. caused it to go downhill.

A full desktop environment is so darn time consuming. I tried it with OpenCDE. However, if we only focus on FreeBSD and each do a couple of applications each, perhaps we can get something good in ports in about 6 months if all the developers who frequent this forum chip in?


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## vanessa (Oct 16, 2013)

cpm said:
			
		

> Good advocacy for a FreeBSD demand, @vanessa, but is a mystery today to know why developers are not enough interested to work in such DEs. The law of supply & demand doesn't work here as it's supposed that usually works. Seems that there are miles and miles of millions reasons to say "NO".



Which is a pity then, at the end of day we still don't have a usable desktop. Blaming Linux for bad code or wrong decisions does't help either.



			
				cpm said:
			
		

> I guess the developers have to approach to user's demand(s), but how do that? Well, be one of them is a good start



And a very hard one! I can't even imagine replacing my OS X with GNOME, KDE or co. right now. The gap is still huge!


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## vanessa (Oct 16, 2013)

kpedersen said:
			
		

> Gnome 2 used to work quite well with FreeBSD around 7.x era. Then this stuff with dbus etc... caused it to go downhill.
> 
> A full desktop environment is so darn time consuming. I tried it with OpenCDE. However, if we only focus on FreeBSD and each do a couple of applications each, perhaps we can get something good in ports in about 6 months if all the developers who frequent this forum chip in?



It even doesn't need those applications. What is more important is that graphics, sound, Bluetooth, WiFi, USB, video, mounting, CD burning, etc. work out of the box. If you start to compile GNOME or KDE you get so many "cute" options: ALSA, GStreamer, PulseAudio, VLC, oh hold on please - I need weeks to "plumb up" the "right" choice and combination, then configure them properly. It's really a mess.

Yes, I also think that if FreeBSD developers just copy the functionality of OS X  (which is in fact FreeBSD based!) piece by piece, we could have the best free DE. And by re-inventing Quartz and QuickTime the half work would be done.


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## cpm@ (Oct 16, 2013)

IMHO, having a TODO list is a breakthrough, when put into practice is another story. What could motivate to start up a new DE? Besides users' demands, tic-tac, tic-tac, exactly is a bunch of money :e

The current situation is not like to brag, and for this reason no one wants to do anything or move one finger for "love to technology".


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## zspider (Oct 16, 2013)

cpm said:
			
		

> Nifty post, @zspider. I'll save this _quote_ with your permission. Truly, it was a big LOL :e



I got a laugh out of that too, permission granted.


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## TiberiusDuval (Oct 16, 2013)

GNOME3? Not having that available for FreeBSD is not a very great loss, in my opinion. I cannot say which one I loathe more, Windows 8's Modern UI or GNOME3, I have tested both, and came to conclusion that I will not either install Windows 8 or any Linux distro having GNOME3 as default DE.


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## vanessa (Oct 17, 2013)

TiberiusDuval said:
			
		

> GNOME3? Not having that available for FreeBSD is not a very great loss, in my opinion. I cannot say which one I loathe more, Windows 8's Modern UI or GNOME3, I have tested both, and came to conclusion that I will not either install Windows 8 or any Linux distro having GNOME3 as default DE.



So what are you working with on a day-by-day basis?


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## TiberiusDuval (Oct 17, 2013)

KDE4 (PC-BSD and OpenSuse) and Windows 7, on desktop machine and Ubuntu Unity on laptop.


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## Zare (Oct 17, 2013)

I use a combination of Windowmaker, GNOME2 and Compton. At work, on RHEL 6.4, at home on FreeBSD 9.1 and Arch Linux. It gives me sufficient eye-candy (shadows, transparency, geometry effects), a NeXTSTEP desktop workflow, and sufficient integration via GNOME2 services and end-user applications. Also, there's a GTK2-GNUstep widget theme which makes everything look unified. It even doesn't take much to configure it for interoperability.

So I really don't care about "the latest desktop". Windowmaker is maintained and completely stable. GNOME2 has been forked as MATE (I'm actually using MATE on Arch), and there are several light desktop compositors that can be used with any window manager. 

Best of all, this stuff can even work under Cygwin, let alone a real *nix OS. Linuxisms don't concern me, until we come to *nix audio processing stuff. That's when I get pissed off.


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## vanessa (Oct 18, 2013)

Sorry guys, I forgot to mention that I opened a new thread over here with the same question and it is growing rapidly. So please let this one rest in piece


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