As you might already know, FreeSBIE is a LiveCD based on the FreeBSD Operating system, or even easier, a FreeBSD-based operating system that works directly from a CD, without touching your hard drive. Today, FreeSBIE 1.1 is released.You can download it from one of the mirrors in the download page of the FreeSBIE website or via BitTorrent.
The announcement states:
It’s our honour and pleasure to announce FreeSBIE 1.1, a LiveCD based on FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE. Some of the new features since 1.0 include:
– A renewed series of scripts to support power users in the use of FreeSBIE 1.1.
– An installer to let users install FreeSBIE 1.1 on their hard drives, thus having a powerful operating system such as FreeBSD, but with all the personalizations FreeSBIE 1.1 carries.
– The presence of the best open source software, chosen and personalized, such as X.Org 6.7, XFCE 4.2RC1, Firefox 1.0 and Thunderbird 0.9.2.
i loved FreeBSD in the short time i used it (no support for my wifi card), and i’m going to try this out. how is the install procedure? Same as Knoppix? what packages are included in this BSD flavor? Will I be able to download GNOME from the FreeBSD repos?
I love that it comes with the new XFCE 4.2RC1, but lets say I install this to my Hard Drive, can I update XFCE using ports once it is out?
Once you installed freesbie to your hd, you’ll be able to use all the power FreeBSD 5.3 gives to you, so you will be able to cvsup your source and ports tree, create new users, install new packages, upgrade the ones you find in FreeSBIE 1.1
and use it as excuses if your girlfriends wants you to meet her parents
I like how a live cd autodetects everything, and the idea of installing it to the hdd is appealing as well, but in my experience with installing knoppix & damn small linux live cd’s to hdd, it resulted in a ‘single user’ type system, which I wasn’t thrilled with. I’m sure I just overlooked something.
Knoppix by default uses the username “knoppix” but root is also available. damn small linux is also similar. I dont understand your “single user” type statement?
Look at http://www.freesbie.org/?section=faq-en
“Is there a way to install FreeSBIE on my HD ?
Unfortunately, at the moment there is no way to install FreeSBIE on a hard disk, but there is work under way to support such feature.”
It seems that you cannot install Freesbie to your hard drive. If you like it, just install FreeBSD.
If you would’ve clicked the read more button:
“An installer to let users install FreeSBIE 1.1 on their hard drives, thus having a powerful operating system such as FreeBSD, but with all the personalizations FreeSBIE 1.1 carries.”
My cheap optical wheel mouse doesn’t work with Freesbie, it works on Freebsd on virtual pc 2004
This liveCD doesn’t even support centrino wi-fi without loading up “pre-compiled” klm’s off of a usb thumbdrive
you’ve done a lot of great work but I need to see some basics like wi-fi support before this even begins to compete with some of the popular linux live CD’s out there.
Kudos on the effort anyhow
Is there something I am missing in CD technology lately…?
ftp://ftp8.de.freesbie.org/unix/FreeSBIE/1.1/i386/
BSD LiveCD cool
Will it boot on Amd64 computer? Currently, I am using gentoo works fine. I will like to try FreeBSD.
“Currently, I am using gentoo works fine. I will like to try FreeBSD. ”
i have found gentoo and fedora to work better than freebsd on this platform
There are some optical mices that work like crap under x. Example: Samsung OMSPB3 and some friends behave so, that moving the mouse, the pointer jumps from upper right corner to the lower right corner. You can move it 1-2 cms, but after that it jumps back to one of the 2 positions, making x totally unusable. This happens under ALL the recent freebsds, not only Freesbie
The funny thing is that when I loaded up FreeSBIE 1.0 it was on a thinkpad T40 – the trackpad, pointer and keyboard worked perfectly.
And get this – even sound drivers worked fine too.
The only 2 things that did not work with were the Intel 10/100/1000 onboard nic and the centrino wi-fi.
All I’m saying is its such a shame that all these other components work but they haven’t taken the time to include wireless drivers. And before anyone trash talks me yes there ARE FreeBSD drivers for the nic on the T40 – that’s why I mentioned i got liveCD to work only after i loaded the drivers off my usb thumbdrive.
Milione – FreeBSD junkie since 2.x
I hope that FreeSBIE does to the BSDs what Knoppix has done for linux: make it a lot easier to try, install, and ultimately make the BSDs more popular: they are great operating systems, except that not much attention had been paid so far in making them more user friendly.
Not sure about that. Knoppix is popular for what it is: Knoppix, that is. While world and dog seem to have a Knoppix-CD nowadays, I am not sure whether this induced so many people to switch to Linux.. (?)
Those I could imagine that some Linux people would give BSD a go after having used the Freesbie CD.
“While world and dog seem to have a Knoppix-CD nowadays, I am not sure whether this induced so many people to switch to Linux..”
you can imagine it did not. however several people who are scared to install other operating systems are more comfortable trying out live cds
knoppix revolutionised the live cd concept with hardware detection that just rocks. linux certainly is benifitted in a huge way with knoppix.
hell it was even a popular method to get debian installed on the harddisk. the new debian installer is so much better that it isnt necessary now but dont underestimate what knoppix has done all just a single guy
XFCE 4.2 stable.
Well unlike Knoppix and Mepis, Freesbie 1.1 failed to boot on my sysytem. I couldn’t even begin to tell you why.
Regardless which boot option tried, I wound up staring at picture of a lake – no combination of keystrokes let be escape.
Not including them might be a license issue, for all we know. (Does one have to get the firmware directly from intel, for instance?)
but I’ve allocated all my Primary partitions to other OSs.
I know BSDs are among the most stable OSs available out there, but is there any that can be installed on extended partitions?
What happened to mplayer plugin for firefox.
Now I can’t watch streams from tv4all.com
Regardless which boot option tried, I wound up staring at picture of a lake – no combination of keystrokes let be escape.
Possible solution: That behavior happened to me on a system with a low-end SiS motherboard, and I found that disabling Firewire in the BIOS fixed the boot problem. Obviously sooner or later I want Firewire, but sooner or later I also want a better motherboard ;-).
it is really nice,I love it!for those who wants to try FreeBSD,they can try it as live cd FreeSBIE and they can as well install it to their computer.to me GREAT chance to learn the UNIX.thank you to the developers GREAT job!
they can remaster it and add Thunderbird 1.0 😛
I was really looking forward to the HD install feature.
Well unlike Knoppix and Mepis, Freesbie 1.1 failed to boot on my sysytem. I couldn’t even begin to tell you why.
Very unfortunate reality which is same here. Just DLed FreeSBie 1.1 and it hangs as early as on first screen saying BTX loader halted, no prompt, no nothing except for a lot of hexidecimal stuff covering part of the screen.
It also seems to detect far to much memory (I got 640meg, it founds like 738). Maybe this is the problem?
I’m not sure, but anyway it’s a darn shame as I’d really would’ve love to try it out. Maybe it’ll work better on my homebox even though I doubt it as I use GF4 card back home….
Tough luck I guess, I’ll just hope that whenever 1.2 comes out it’ll work better…
Guys,
if you have problems with FreeSBIE 1.1 (and I think with FreeBSD 5.3) i hope you would like help freesbie develop
sending your dmesg and/or hw specification to bugs_AT_freesbie.org. Thanks for supporting us
It’s illegal to distribute the firmware — the GNU/Linux distros that do so are in clear violation of the licensing terms. That said, Intel doesn’t seem to mind.
Well I checked on the site first and noticed that the bugs section was broken so I couldn’t see what was posted/not posted there. Anyway, thanks for the address, I’ve just posted an report of the error and my HW
Sorry, we are restyling our website. Please refer to out ml.
keep on the good work!
I´m writing this from FreeSBIE 1.1 – and I´ll probably install it on my HD later.
“Look at http://www.freesbie.org/?section=faq-en
“Is there a way to install FreeSBIE on my HD ?
Unfortunately, at the moment there is no way to install FreeSBIE on a hard disk, but there is work under way to support such feature.”
It seems that you cannot install Freesbie to your hard drive. If you like it, just install FreeBSD.”
Heh???
When I follow the above link what I see at the bottom of the page is this:
“Is there a way to install FreeSBIE on my HD ?
Yes ! Since FreeSBIE 1.1 it’s possible to use the BSDInstaller to install FreeSBIE on your hard drive, and then turn it into FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE by means of cvsup.”