4 ms·

I loved PC-BSD, and really think this was a tragedy. I know helloSystem is supposed to be the successor, but it's a bit overwrought in my opinion. I love FreeB

I loved PC-BSD, and really think this was a tragedy. I know helloSystem is supposed to be the successor, but it's a bit overwrought in my opinion. I love FreeBSD as a server and I love FreeBSD as a base for macOS. I wish using it as a desktop was just a little bit easier.

wkat4242 4y ago
I use FreeBSD as my primary desktop daily, it was not hard to install and maintain. A lot easier than arch Linux in fact. KDE has a nice guide on how to set it up (which is not more than a handful of commands by the way) Things like zfs on root are amazing and it performs well. What's pretty unique is the combination of stable OS and rolling up to date userland. And the configurability with the ports collection (a bit similar to arch's AUR with the main difference being that the ports collection contains the same software as the binary packages do unlike arch where it contains user contributed packages not in the main repo). But basically it means that if you want to make changes to compile options you can. Drawbacks are worse hardware support and software designed with Linux in mind too much (depending on linuxisms that are not shared with other unixes). But overall I've managed to avoid those pretty well.
- torstenvl 4y ago
  In my experience, FreeBSD has a lot of rough edges with configuration. - With emacs, I have to put (keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-?) in init.el for backspace to work. I have to assume this is due to a weird termcap/terminfo issue with what FreeBSD is reporting to emacs, especially because there's a lot of other weirdness w/r/t clearing the minibuffer and confusing garbled messages. - I have to struggle every time to get X to work. Autoconfiguration sucks and it's always a game of X -configure followed by manual editing followed by copying the file to /usr/share/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/xx-xxxxxx.conf - Installing a desktop is insane. Packages don't work right (Cinnamon always installs without any icons at all?). The Gnome metapackage is, e.g., gnome-42_2 instead of gnome-desktop, the latter of which won't give you a functioning gnome desktop. I'm sure there are other things I'm missing, but the point is it's emphatically not a good experience. They used to be better than that. These days it's more important than ever that something like PC-BSD fill the gap.
  - nix23 4y ago
    >These days it's more important than ever that something like PC-BSD fill the gap. Why a new "Distribution" just make the Gnome/Cinnamon package better.... >With emacs, I have to put (keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-?) in init.el for backspace to work. Same, make a bugreport and/or make the package better ;) https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/ https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/ https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/porters-handbook/ https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/porters-handbook/
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Strange, I didn't have these issues. X always starts right away (on several different NUCs), and installing KDE was really easy using the instructions here: https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD/Setup https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD/Setup The only problem I see is some hardware support (resolution/scaling detection isn't 100% perfect and needs some massaging) and the system monitor tool in KDE doesn't detect everything like temperature, network traffic etc. The old ksysguard does so I think the new one is depending too much on linuxisms. Emacs I've never used so I can't comment on that.
    - nix23 4y ago
      >X always starts right away Same, i never had a problem on my T61p(nvidia), X250(Intel) and Z600-Workstation(AMD), in fact NO Linux-Distro i want supports the legacy 340xx-line of Nvidia-Drivers, but FreeBSD supports all of them...so there's that ;)

wkat4242 4y ago

I use FreeBSD as my primary desktop daily, it was not hard to install and maintain. A lot easier than arch Linux in fact. KDE has a nice guide on how to set it up (which is not more than a handful of commands by the way) Things like zfs on root are amazing and it performs well. What's pretty unique is the combination of stable OS and rolling up to date userland. And the configurability with the ports collection (a bit similar to arch's AUR with the main difference being that the ports collection contains the same software as the binary packages do unlike arch where it contains user contributed packages not in the main repo). But basically it means that if you want to make changes to compile options you can. Drawbacks are worse hardware support and software designed with Linux in mind too much (depending on linuxisms that are not shared with other unixes). But overall I've managed to avoid those pretty well.

torstenvl 4y ago
In my experience, FreeBSD has a lot of rough edges with configuration. - With emacs, I have to put (keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-?) in init.el for backspace to work. I have to assume this is due to a weird termcap/terminfo issue with what FreeBSD is reporting to emacs, especially because there's a lot of other weirdness w/r/t clearing the minibuffer and confusing garbled messages. - I have to struggle every time to get X to work. Autoconfiguration sucks and it's always a game of X -configure followed by manual editing followed by copying the file to /usr/share/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/xx-xxxxxx.conf - Installing a desktop is insane. Packages don't work right (Cinnamon always installs without any icons at all?). The Gnome metapackage is, e.g., gnome-42_2 instead of gnome-desktop, the latter of which won't give you a functioning gnome desktop. I'm sure there are other things I'm missing, but the point is it's emphatically not a good experience. They used to be better than that. These days it's more important than ever that something like PC-BSD fill the gap.
- nix23 4y ago
  >These days it's more important than ever that something like PC-BSD fill the gap. Why a new "Distribution" just make the Gnome/Cinnamon package better.... >With emacs, I have to put (keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-?) in init.el for backspace to work. Same, make a bugreport and/or make the package better ;) https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/ https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/ https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/porters-handbook/ https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/porters-handbook/
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Strange, I didn't have these issues. X always starts right away (on several different NUCs), and installing KDE was really easy using the instructions here: https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD/Setup https://community.kde.org/FreeBSD/Setup The only problem I see is some hardware support (resolution/scaling detection isn't 100% perfect and needs some massaging) and the system monitor tool in KDE doesn't detect everything like temperature, network traffic etc. The old ksysguard does so I think the new one is depending too much on linuxisms. Emacs I've never used so I can't comment on that.
  - nix23 4y ago
    >X always starts right away Same, i never had a problem on my T61p(nvidia), X250(Intel) and Z600-Workstation(AMD), in fact NO Linux-Distro i want supports the legacy 340xx-line of Nvidia-Drivers, but FreeBSD supports all of them...so there's that ;)