Firefly BSD the DragonFly distribution releases two pages full of screenshots with various applications running on Firefly BSD. here
and here.
Firefly BSD Screenshots Galore
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Eugenia Loli
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Those are KDE screenshots, not FireFly. Show me some OS specific benchmarks or apps.
yeah, just standard gnome and kde screenies.. Nothing specific to DragonFly or Firefly.
2 good things:
– for their business, it’s good to show their GUI to potential customers
– there were just enough screenshots, which is way better than osdir.com’s mega screenshots galores of 100+ screenshots…
🙂
easy install compared to standard BSD?
It’s sort of surprising how KDE looks better then Gnome from afar but once you get closer it’s the other way around. Anyway I don’t think a screenshot is going to show of anything about DragonflyBSD. It’s all kernel work up till now.
Is it just me or do all screenshots of BSD or Linux start to look the same after a while? I mean, how many times can one see KDE or Gnome?
I am a KDE user but I have to say that making Keramik KDE’s default style was a big mistake and those screenies remind me of that. It’s bad that you need to be a programmer to creat a KDE style. Designers are not programmers.
It’s not just you, Chris. A screenshot of some kick-ass Firefly-only GUI config tool would be great… but no, just more of the same KDE/GNOME shots.
I know people like to show off their wares, but honestly! If you wanted you could probably make up your own “screenshots” gallery just be picking out other people’s! It’s just not tennis anymore.
We need a BSD or a Linux that uses something other than KDE or Gnome as its default UI (Libranet uses IceWM). That would rock.
What’s the point? These are the default gnome and kde screenshots :s
Try again…
Nothin wrong with them putting up screenshots of KDE/GNOME since DragonFly is relatively new. Its nice proof that the programs work. However, why on earth was this posted? Maybe its a slow news day, but what is next?
“Exclusive Report: Sky is blue!”
Ironically the screenshots they link to at the bottom of the second page are a sight more interesting. At least the gnome gallery shows some variations that are possible.
“Exclusive Report: Sky is blue!”
Obviously you are not married, so you don’t have all the information. In reality the sky is whatever color one’s wife says it is.
“Obviously you are not married, so you don’t have all the information. In reality the sky is whatever color one’s wife says it is.”
Actually my post is even worse then that…I live in the Pacific Northwest. So, I have heard that the sky is blue, but have no actual proof.
RE:easy install compared to standard BSD?
i wish, this old computer i have will not boot up any BSD for some reason, (i wish it would) but Linux runs good on it, i think BSD chokes on the USB (but not 100% certain) some Linux distros do too during boot…
slackware don’t.
i can use the following parameter for install.
bare.i nousb
then i can enable USB after it is installed and then it works good…
I am not just saying FUD, but i looked around their site, you have to pay for it too. Why would I do that? I guess for the support, but still, doesn’t seem worth it.
Also, more OS specific screenshots would have been better. My personal opinion for desktop BSD is a way to make it better is to make a gui application for installing and maintaining ports (if there isn’t one already). I think that would help bring desktop freebsd a little more usability. JMHO
http://www.fireflybsd.com/products/
doesn’t mention dragonfly bsd, only freebsd 4
we’ll it’s pretty much a cobranded version of dragonfly with little change.
i wish, this old computer i have will not boot up any BSD for some reason
I know, this happens when for instance you have a HDD with Linux and WinXP on it…
Try removing offending hardware, and eventually FreeBSD will boot just fine.
I had this problem on several computers. The solution is to format the HDD for another clean FS.
I don’t know who’s going to spend a buck into this if FreeBSD is just fine…
And I didn’t see anything on their web site that cought my attention, or that tells me the benefits.
I think their web site and their logo don’t look professional at all. On the contact page there is not their physical address either.
Is this a bedroom company?
It is mentioned.
http://www.fireflybsd.com/aboutus.php
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/slideshow.php?release=195&slide=1
IceWM is a window manager whereas KDE and GNOME are desktop environments. You wouldn’t be getting much work done while just using IceWM, would you? That would be a fairly useless experience. But if you then start making use of GNOME or KDE in conjunction with IceWM, you’re back to having them as your “UI” (as you called it), since neither desktop environment really cares what window manager you use provided it supports the NETWM functionality.
Before you post screenshots, please clean up the fonts. Turn on auto-hinting so it doesn’t look like some hobbyist crap.
“Turn on auto-hinting so it doesn’t look like some hobbyist crap.”
What! ..and ruin the mom and pop prono feel?? You have to be kidding me.
but I know it isn’t, because it says BSD, and that means stable? And difficult? Or not, because I don’t really know, that’s just what comes to my mind.
So what is the best reason to use a BSD type of OS versus regular Linux distributions?
We need a BSD or a Linux that uses something other than KDE or Gnome as its default UI (Libranet uses IceWM). That would rock.
None of the BSD’s have a “default GUI”. You can install any one you like, from ports/pkgsrc, without installing KDE/Gnome.
The best reason to choose BSD over Linux? Choosing the best is really subjective.
The main reason *I* choose FreeBSD over Linux is the wonderful ports system. The following four links (the Handbook and three excellent tutorials) should contain everything one needs to understand and use FreeBSD ports
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports.htm…
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/07/FreeBSD_Basics.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/28/FreeBSD_Basics.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/09/18/FreeBSD_Basics.html
Another not-so-secondary reason is security.
http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/021104.php
And to me, a very important reason is also the license. I have a very strong preference for the academic licenses (BSD, MIT) towards the copyleft licenses (GPL, LGPL).
s/towards/rather than/
“easy install compared to standard BSD?”
They are all easy to install, if you can’t even go thru the installer don’t bother with any of the UN*Xes. The only weird part might be the difference is partitions and slices but you are supposed to actually READ what you are told to read.
http://www.netbsd.org/guide/en/chap-inst.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.h…
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html
http://www.bsdinstaller.org/
There seems to be some confusion about what Firefly BSD is. As far as I know from readng the mailing lists there are 2 goals for Firefly :
– to provide an integrated instantly usable distribution of DragonFly BSD
– to provide a way for the community to support the developers by buying cd’s
– to provide a way for the community to support the developers by buying cd’s
I already contributed to FreeBSD.
The DragonFly BSD community, which overlaps with the freebsd community somewhat, but is definately seperate from the FreeBSD non-profit organisation for example.
The amount of work these people are pouring into DragonFly (and thus Firefly BSD) is quite amazing BTW.
Glad i’m not the only one tired of seeing gnome/kde screenshots all the time…
“new version of <insert Linux / BSD distro name>, minor changes in bundled applications, click here to see 130 gnome screenshots”
“We need a BSD or a Linux that uses something other than KDE or Gnome as its default UI (Libranet uses IceWM). That would rock.”
Try
http://www.freesbie.org
It is a Live CD “distribution” of FreeBSD 5.3 that gives you the choice of using XFCE or Fluxbox.
Cool, those are the guys from my UNI doing bsd work… pretty cool.
I’ll have to try it out
Is there a AMD64 iso ?
I’m a long time FreeBSD user,
I recently tried DragonflyBSD, unfortunately lot’s of the ports didn’t work for me, including Xorg and XFree86-4, so that was basically the end of that experiment for me.
I still like the ideas they implement, I especially envy Dragonfly for application checkpointing.
If you want usable ports use pkgsrc on DragoFly. DragonFlyBSD is now officially supported the pkgsrc guys and some DFly people submit patches to fix problems. Xorg works fine, and so do most major packages.
You need the DragonFly BSD port overrides if you want to compile yourself. But save yourself the hassle and just download the packages from http://gobsd.com/packages/ or ftp://ftp.allbsd.org/pub/DragonFly/ports/i386/packages-20050101/
You can also fetch them automatically with ‘pkg_add -r pkgname’ if your system is set up correctly.
Heh, even the DragonFly ports overrides don’t work properly half the time.
Frankly, till DragonFly gets it own, functional ports tree, installing packages from source will be too much of a hassle for most users. The simplicity of ‘cd /usr/ports/www/mozilla ; make install clean distclean’ is what (among other things) makes FreeBSD such a great system.
Adam
Here I was all excited thinking there was some new development on the TV series Firefly. Ah well. BSD is cool too. 🙂
Frankly, till DragonFly gets it own, functional ports tree, installing packages from source will be too much of a hassle for most users.
As someone mentioned earlier pkgsource works pretty well (it comes preinstalled in the gobsd.com iso, don’t know about Firefly) and if you’re really stuck the DragonFly mailinglists are really friendly. But I personally consider DragonFly to be more alpha software than an OS for ‘most users’ at the moment (though ‘alpha’ makes it sound more unstable than it is).
Also no definate plans are announced for the DragonFly packaging system. It may turn out to be completely different from FreeBSD package/ports.
Nope, but DragonFly is known to run on some AMD64 machines (in 32bit mode)
See http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2005-01/msg00105.htm…
on kde, fonts are jagged and dirty…
typical default install