OSWeekly reviews PC-BSD, and concludes: “From PC-BSD’s roadmap to their default installation, I honestly feel good about where these guys are headed with their take on FreeBSD. This operating system has it all: support both from the professional level as well as that of the community, the ability to install Linux software, thanks to the binary compatibility layer, and of course – speed.”
Another day, another most beginner friendly os. What a surprise.
Yeah, OK, but did you catch the subtext of the very first line?!
FreeBSD, perhaps the last OS that is really open to discovery as the Linux adoption rate continues to climb.
It’s almost as if he laments that so many people are using GNU/Linux! I find that a refreshing fear.
I still believe that the most beginner friendly software is the software that forces the beginner to learn.
If they are forced to learn from the beginning, then they won’t resist learning along the way and be able to solve problems when they come across them.
While i agree people should be motivated to learn, i don’t agree that they have to learn how to install each of the zillions of operating systems.
Operating system, and applications are there to help people do work, and not to make people waste time on learning how to install additional font which they want to use in their gfx project.
Also if i had to spend a lot of time trying to learn how to configure simplest things, i wouldn’t use computers today. I liked them because it was relatively easy to change things. I liked programming because i started from Delphi and Pascal (and later learned some assembler and c/c++/whatever), instead of simple text aditor and commandline gcc (and if i had to use autotools shit from start i wouldn’t touch programming ever again).
Again: computers were “invented” to make our life easier (help calculate things faster than we can), not to make us learn how to setup hundreds of things to even start calculations ;P
— edit to make it more on topic —
It’s great that more and more “desktop targetted” distributions are trying to make things simpler and nicer to use.
Edited 2006-08-10 12:47
but then what about security?
this work assistant does not exist in a vacume any more.
with the internet and similar, if the device can install any kind of additional data, it can be made do stuff across the net (or some other connection) that the owner dont want and/or dont know about.
more and more i find myself looking at this as the fundamental problem of the home computer, the ease of isntallation.
im thinking that to make a home computer secure one have to move away from installing software (be them binary or scripts). instead im thinking something like a game console.
if that dont work then one have to go for “known good” sources. with *nix distros today one have just that, the distros creator and their package server.
a package selection GUI isnt any more or less user friendly then the windows or mac way of doing installs. its just that the latter ones are more familiar to anyone that have used one of those systems.
i have more then ones seen comments from long time linux users wondering how windows users manage to keep track of all those small programs that they find on the net.
No, that might be user friendly, but it’s not beginner friendly.
Right on, tough love all the way, it’s for their own good. At the end of installing certain distros the user has all the survival and crash recovery skills they need. Those are the best.
I recently had to reinstall my PC. I tried both:
– Ubuntu Dapper Drake
– PC-BSD
Once on the desktop, PC-BSD seems faster, snappier, cleaner than Ubuntu.
PBI software packages are a breeze: you actually download a package you can store, burn to create your pbi collection.
With ubuntu, no internet, no hope. It’s not obivous to get the packages on your computer before to install them.
In fact, PC-BSD seems more polished when on the desktop, thanks to KDE only environment I think. But the boot process is awfully long (2mn+), even more if you have a bad CDRW in your CD-burner.
Using PC-BSD is very nice, but connecting to hardware (Webcam, external CD-burner) is not as reliable as on Ubuntu.
Nevertheless, I am very pleased that in version 1.2 of PC-BSD, everything that’s on the desktop work, and that you can feel the some unity in every piece of software bundled.
PBI software packages are a breeze: you actually download a package you can store, burn to create your pbi collection.
With ubuntu, no internet, no hope. It’s not obivous to get the packages on your computer before to install them.
I honestly don’t understand what you’re talking about. How do these wonderful PBI packages arrive to your computer? Through Internet? DEB’s do that too. From a local media (LAN, CD/DVD)? DEB’s do that too.
Need a local copy of the packages? APT puts everything it downloads into /var/cache/apt. I’ve used it often to downgrade an application I didn’t like to a previous version I did like.
If you get a DEB from somewhere else you can install that directly, too.
The article was full of nothing but hot air. It doesn’t offer any screenshots. It doesn’t detail about what this PBI system is and how this “great” package manager works. It tells us that the most flawless software installation the author has ever seen was on Windows???! I mean, come on, who wants to have their package manager compared with the Windows anarchy?
I’m not saying PC-BSD is bad because they didn’t give us any info, really. I’m just as clueless as I was before I read the article. And if you’re going to send me to look into PC-BSD myself then I ask you, what was the purpose of the article?
“I honestly don’t understand what you’re talking about. How do these wonderful PBI packages arrive to your computer?”
If you leave your GNU/Linux CD’s under your pillow at night the PBI fairy will replace them with a CD full of PBI packages.
> If you leave your GNU/Linux CD’s under your pillow at night the PBI fairy will replace them with a CD full of PBI packages.
Funny. But I doubt RPM or DEB CD’s would be replaced with a single PBI CD. Isn’t a PBI larger (each with often redundant files)?
PBI packages do not have dependencies while .deb packages do. Which kind of package do you think is easier to distribute?
PBI packages do not have dependencies while .deb packages do. Which kind of package do you think is easier to distribute?
Ah, a package management system without dependencies. What a wonderful idea. Now I understand why the author of the article looked up to Windows as a role model.
What use is ease of distribution if actually installing the package is complicated?
Dependencies are always relevant, there’s no way to ellude them, really. You can have the manager take care of them, or you can have the user do it. Which way is more confortable? Attempting to install a kit only to be told: “you also need package X”. Then you go fetch that one and come back to find out you need another package. Which may need another. No thanks.
That’s in the happy cases when you’re told what you need. Sometimes you’re told the package needs a certain file, and good luck finding that.
Just wait….PC-BSD is in its infancy. I see great things coming from this project. I too, am not using it as a primary system or anything, but it sure shows promise for simplicity. THIS might be the system for Grandma doing her e-mail and stuff…don’t know yet…but let’s keep an eye on this project. It’s a nice one..
Additionally it doesn’t introduce tons of SLOOOW scripts, as SuSE does. You get clean BSD inside without tons of unneeded services.
yeh, only suse.
I’m not saying it’s only SuSE. I meant that when you get PC-BSD, it doesn’t matter whether you are a hacker or a beginner – you get (almost …) what you want. If you want to use /etc and you are used to FreeBSD, it works as if you had FreeBSD (/etc, ports, building and other stuff). If you want to use GUI apps, you just click .pbi.
Unfortunately *BSD doesn’t support rt2500 well (lost pings, file download interruptions), so I need to stick with WinXP
In my opinion, PC-BSD has become a great OS bringing some advancements to the BSD world never seen before, like PBI for example. I want the best for PC-BSD as they are taking FreeBSD to a next level, still FreeBSD alone is a great OS I presonally use it. But, saying ‘the Most Beginner Friendly OS’ I think they are words to BIG at the moment, I know is a user friendly OS but, there are some areas of improvement other OSes have got right. Like a more up2date repository, a bigger repository, plug and play support for more devices, etc. So all in all, PC-BSD is ‘a great OS with a bright future.’
…but Mac OS X might very well be ‘the system for Grandma doing her e-mail and stuff’… And it’s at that state today and has been so for years now…
I know you’d need to own a Mac, but even an older one would do for ‘Grandma doing her e-mail and stuff’.
Mac OS X 10.3 runs quite nicely on an iMac G3 as soon as it has enough RAM. An iMac G3 500 MHz+ or better works quite nicely!
… but who gives a ?§$%&$§%& about Mac OS X? This article is about PC-BSD. Mac users tend to think it’s necessary to some kind of promote their system everywhere. Well, just relax and read about other operating systems. Some people just have different needs and prefer _not_ to use bloatware …
Edited 2006-08-10 19:36
I’m happy to say that I use Mac OS X, Linux and even BeOS regularly. I’d like to deal with BSD in it’s cleanest sense, however, for now Mac OS X is the closest I’ve gotten….
That put aside, I merely comment on the fact that not much in the world of operating systems could logically be touted as being ‘easier’ on a ‘Grandma doing her e-mail and stuff’…
There is no doubt that there are many systems out there that have something to offer that is unique and that make each particular system stand out — Mac OS X undoubtedly has usability as one of these features…
There might be many a good explanation as to why someone would choose PC-BSD, without bashing anyone or anything, however, my point is simply that in this particular case that I argue, Mac OS X might still be well ahead of the competition…
Auto-Login feature. While this is not for everyone out there, I feel pretty strongly that it’s nice to have this choice should I had wished to the route. Obviously, automatically logging as an admin, however, would not be a good plan, so please use some common sense here.
Root login into KDE is disabled by default in PC-BSD and installer won’t continue if you got no standard user account added.
.. please consider that PC-BSD is not the best for the advanced user. It’s designed for the casual folks, not the uber-geek.
You missed FreeBSD default ports system. You can install and upgrade all programs (except PBI installed- because they are self contained binary installations) from command-prompt with one line:
# portupgrade -Nra
kernel and userland is upgraded separately, but due to large portion of custom scripts in PC-BSD I won’t recommend to do it to beginners.
Everyone can make their own PBI installer from favourite app- it is not so sophisticated actually.
http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/PmWiki/CreatingPBIs
Edited 2006-08-10 11:55
You can install and upgrade all programs (except PBI installed- because they are self contained binary installations) from command-prompt with one line:
# portupgrade -Nra
Yeah, that’s user friendly. *roll eyes*
“Yeah, that’s user friendly. *roll eyes*”
Uhm, since this was in reply to the statement that PC-BSD is not for advanced users, why would it be user-friendly?
I agree, however, it’s the part here: “I know you’d need to own a mac…” that’s the problem. PC-BSD is free and that is a big difference. Plus it runs on existing hardware. I love macs…I just don’t “own” many of them.
Thanks….for the comment however…
So he had to try two computers to get the most beginner friendly OS installed?
That doesn’t sound very friendly to me.
Well, I tried PC-BSD (from the 0.8 days) and just could not get used to KDE. Having to use a lot of GTK/Gnome applications, I ended up having to install much of the stuff from ports, PC-BSD did not make sense. There were rumors that there was a Gnome version coming (like Ubuntu and Kbuntu) but I guess not. The the PC-BSD stuff is tied to KDE I guess.
Anyways, I installed stock FreeBSD and used ports to install the stuff I need. Did not have all the other load on it. Just my comfort zone
It’s just my opinion, but,
I think the first place these guys should test is in a Virtual environment.
– Virtual PC for windows and Mac
– VMWare
If you can’t install into these environments easily,
then something is wrong.
After reading this article, I went and downloaded the install .ISO from PC-BSD website and attempted to install into VMware.
Observation #1: Nice graphical boot screen and then dropped into a text mode interface in which I had to hit enter to continue the install. That’s not user or beginner friendly to me.
Observation #2: why is a “beginner friendly” OS installing X header files? Sorry, but Grandma doesn’t need to be compiling anything.
Observation #3: the install failed claiming a subdirectory did not exist (/etc/defaults, I think it was) and told me it was rebooting.
As I suspected, these claims of beginner friendly are unwarranted. Nice try, guys, but you’ve got some work to do.
Whilst your other comments are valid, if pressing “enter” is too hard for you, or for the target group you consider “beginners”, then you’re not looking for beginner-friendly; you’re looking for moron-friendly.
Observation #1: Nice graphical boot screen and then dropped into a text mode interface in which I had to hit enter to continue the install. That’s not user or beginner friendly to me.
Installed Windows XP lately?
Suffice it to say you do a whole lot more than hit enter in text mode.
As to #2, probably because at some point the user (probably not Grandma) will want to try some app that’s not available as a PBI or binary and will give the ports system a shot. Same goes as for doing a portupgrade.
So, you need the header files as well as make, gcc, etc. etc. etc.
It tells us that the most flawless software installation the author has ever seen was on Windows???! I mean, come on, who wants to have their package manager compared with the Windows anarchy?
There’s no problem if you still install software using “emerge” or “rpm” or “apt-get”. But don’t blame those who prefer the dirt-easy Windows way of installing stuff. And please don’t call it “anarchy” because the real anarchy is linux dependency hell.
Nice graphical boot screen and then dropped into a text mode interface in which I had to hit enter to continue the install. That’s not user or beginner friendly to me.
For me it can’t be more simple, they did it the right way. If it’s too complicated for you, then put your computer back into its box, take it back to the store and tell the guy you’re too dumb to use a computer.
why is a “beginner friendly” OS installing X header files? Sorry, but Grandma doesn’t need to be compiling anything
User friendly doesn’t mean it can’t be used by power users. But you fail to understand that one can combine both under a single system.
As I suspected, these claims of beginner friendly are unwarranted. Nice try, guys, but you’ve got some work to do.
No software is perfect, and PC-BSD is still a young system. If you’re unhappy, why don’t you download a C++ eBook on BitTorrent and start giving them a hand?
How do these wonderful PBI packages arrive to your computer? Through Internet? DEB’s do that too. From a local media (LAN, CD/DVD)? DEB’s do that too.
Ok, but you don’t double-click a .deb like a .exe on Windows because .debs don’t include dependencies so it’ll break your system, which wouldn’t happen on Windows or PC-BSD. You download PBIs once for all, whereas each time you install Debian, you need to redownload all your applications again. What a waste of time and bandwidth. And this is why you need a connection to the Internet each time you want to install software and software updates. On PC-BSD no, you download just once, burns a CD-ROM and then no need for the Internet anymore. I don’t know how to explain, you seem to object on purpose…
Ok, but you don’t double-click a .deb
Actually, on Ubuntu, you do. You are only screwed once one of its dependencies is not available in the activated repositories.
Yes. Gdebi is a great tool to install .deb packages graphically.
I haven’t tried PC-BSD recently, so I’m curious…Have they finally come up with utility for configuring ppp and/or pppoe? That’s one of the things that’s always been missing from FreeBSD. Most (if not all) of the people who write these glowing reviews have a router plugged in to their Ethernet port, so of course they are on the Internet automatically without having to configure anything. Those less fortunate souls who either depend on dial-up (that is, ppp) or use pppoe are forced to edit files by hand, because FreeBSD (ditto OpenBSD, NetBSD) lacks any utilities for this purpose. That’s a glaring omission that I never understood. If PC-BSD solves this problem, it would be a great advancement for BSDland.
On a related note, has anyone written a utility to create firewall rules for BSD’s PF firewall system? That’s another badly-needed solution. Linux has had Firestarter and Guarddog for years to deal with this. Newbies shouldn’t have to buy a book on how to write firewall rules.
The above comments are not meant as an attack on BSD. On the contrary, I’ve love to see the BSDs solve these problems. If PC-BSD has already done it, I’d have nothing but praise and would consider switching to it from my current Linux setup. Since I am stuck on dial-up, I cannot easily download PC-BSD to test it, that’s why I’m asking. I’d go ahead and order the CD if it had these features.
I will run the risk of being blatently fanboyish about PC-BSD.
It’s quick once in, I can install it easily, it’s visually pleasant and appealing throughout to me and with pbi’s I can have a productive (note the word, boyos) system up in about (from recollection) 30-40 minutes.
I take note of the critical comments (or comments offering a critique) and don’t dispute them as such, which is why I say, at this stage, opposition is true friendship because taking these comments in the right way will only lead to further improvement.
Without wanting to start (or restart, out of sheer ignorance) any fights, I just hope that the seeming bad blood between PC-BSD and Desktop BSD is transmuted into the sort of greater mutuality that posts elsewhere on OSNews today have mentioned in respect of Ubuntu and Debian. I am an emotional sort of person and believe it or not, this sort of stuff does matter to me.
Anyway, I am happy that PC-BSD is around, please keep it up!
Edited 2006-08-10 16:20
Don’t expect to learn anything about PC-BSD, this article had a very brief introduction and was totally lacking in the details. The one and only thing you might learn from this article is that PC-BSD apparently uses a self-contained binary installation method called PBI. The article didn’t even have the decency to provide a link to the subject of it’s review. This can hardly be called a review.
and of course – speed
I have pcbsd, freespire, Zeta, and BeOS5.03 … the os’s are all speedy, but in this order … 1 BeOS … 2 Zeta … 3 PC-BSD …. 4 freespire. PC-bsd is ok, but I am using Zeta as my main OS … waiting for Haiku
Edited 2006-08-10 22:20
And what about usability ?
Can you install Java or flash easily without activating linux-compatibility layer ?
Not really user-friendly
>And what about usability ?
>Can you install Java or flash easily without >activating linux-compatibility layer ?
Yes you can. FreeBSD has it’s own natively compiled
Java now and Flash is , i am told, back in the
ports.
Personally I prefer DesktopBSD..but all BSDs
kick ass in one area:
SOUND! For those with on-board integrated ac’97
sound(eg anyone buying a new computer)
ALSA sound(the linux default) is buggy!
Not all sound apps can be mixed and no
Kmix does not do ALL sound apps.
With BSD i had NO problems at all
sound just worked , even non-alsa aware java apps
like jin(a chess client) mixed their sound without
blocking mp3s.
It amazes me that ALSA is still being used in linux and that
noone is addressing this problem
So KDE is crap, thanks to tell it, as KMix is a KDE component.
For your info, my computer is using Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS (so gnome 2.14.3) with an AC’97 chipset. No problem what-so-ever.
Flash, BSD native ? 1st news ! Source, please ?
“It amazes me that ALSA is still being used in linux and that
noone is addressing this problem”
Try to understand that KDE is not Linux, and we shall see after if we can do something for your damaged brain…
Wow ! Might I suggest a reading comprehension course?
And maybe a logic course too.
I only said that Java had a natively compiled verion
not Flash.
I am well aware the KDE is not linux bozo.
But “Use Kmix” is the standard refrain from
people like you . I have been using linux
for 7 years. I am also a professional programmer.
So because YOU use it whith no problems means that there are no problems. Wow , what rigorous logic.
Well I already told you how to see the problem
and you might search the forums to discover that this
is a KNOWN BUG with Alsa.
But as a reactionary troll you won’t do that.
Edited 2006-08-12 02:15
ALSA is fine (not bug-free, I guess, but…). Most distros have crappy defaults, which is where those problems come in. Use ALSA everywhere possible (IE, XMMS typically let’s you use ALSA or Arts in KDE), force software mixing (big issue there), and everything is happy.
Much like having nice looking fonts out of the gate, they’re coming around, it’s just taking too long
.