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Some of us still use FreeBSD on a desktop (well, maybe you don't consider xmonad a desktop...) But your point is valid -- it can be an exercise in frustration.
by astangl 14y ago
Some of us still use FreeBSD on a desktop (well, maybe you don't consider xmonad a desktop...) But your point is valid -- it can be an exercise in frustration.
The big advantages Linux has now are mindshare, funding, drivers, and people that devote a lot of time to coming up with OS versions with binary packages that all work well together, so users don't have to build software from source. With FreeBSD that's theoretically possible, but if there's a big public repository of prebuilt binary packages for the latest (9.1) release, I am not aware of it, and my system doesn't know about it. So upgrades can be painful if you have a lot of ports and your machine isn't super-fast. And running into errors in the middle of the process seems par for the course -- then you get to figure out what's wrong and how to fix it.
I have heard good things about PC-BSD (based on FreeBSD) though. Apparently it's much more user-friendly for people looking to use it as a desktop environment.
- rgbrenner 14y ago"if there's a big public repository of prebuilt binary packages for the latest (9.1) release, I am not aware of it" FreeBSD had a security breach shortly before 9.1.. so some of their hardware was offline. So packages were not available at release. They expect to make them available at some point. Then you can install out of date packages (since packages are frozen at release), and rebuild half of them to fix security or serious bugs. "I have heard good things about PC-BSD" I have also heard good things about PC-BSD. I've played with it a bit, and it seems promising. I haven't used it enough to recommend it.. but it seems like it's worth a try if you need a FBSD desktop. Definitely more promising than the other BSD desktop efforts I've seen over the years (all of which are dead AFAIK).