Following the heels of the successful Kubuntu effort, PC-BSD was created to offer both home and business desktop users a solid alternative to other systems available. PC-BSD aims to be user-friendly, especially in the area of software installation and management. Of course PC-BSD comes with a nice graphical installer which can also be used by other Free-BSD users to install the OS in a modern fashion.
Screenshots and an
ISO for Download are available immediately.
PC-BSD puts its bet entirely on KDE 3.4:
"KDE is one of the most full-featured, easy to use window managers available today. The C++ / Qt language it is written in, makes the development of software very easy, and is well documented. Desktop users coming from other platforms like Windows® or Mac OS X®, will immediately feel right at home with the KDE interface. This is not to say that there are no other nice window managers available, but at this point we do not feel that they have the polish and breadth that KDE offers."
They also wish to preserve the integrity of the FreeBSD system, so that power users can enjoy the rock solid system that FreeBSD provides, as well as the wealth of technical information freely available online.
Comments
This project could potentially be one of the most useful projects to date. Yet they are likely to drive away many potential contributors and users because of the unnecessary propaganda.
In summary: nice project, love the idea, wish they would leave out the FUD, such as in here:
"One of the reasons FreeBSD was chosen over Linux is an issue at the very core of the two systems. Linux is not an OS in the true sense of the word, but rather a kernel with a collection of various packages and software, combined to form distributions. Because of this, Linux has the tendency to become very fragmented, and break compatibility with just about every release of a new distribution. This makes the creating and supporting of software a nightmare for developers, who usually don't wish to rewrite portions of code every couple of months.
FreeBSD on the other hand is a proven platform that is created to be a complete UNIX based operating system at its core. With the standard FreeBSD OS installed, a desktop can be built and maintained very easily, and code ported to it has a much longer life."
Agreed. It's interesting to see an attempt at a very `popular' *BSD,
and I'd be pleased to see it thrive and live up to some of its aims. But there's a lot of unfair or unreasonable comment about the competition.
(http://www.pcbsd.org/about.html):
"The system must be dynamic, yet backwards compatible."
If not at the expense of other important points, long backwards compatability
would indeed be a great advantage in encouraging adoption of the system and availability of software for it. It's proprietary (binary distribution) software that has the most problems in this, so for many users it's not very important. But more hardware oriented free software (e.g. audio, tv, etc. programs) can have version problems in spite of being compiled on the target system, so there's certainly _some_ advantage in striving for backwards compatability.
"The operating system must be minimalist"
This seeks to tell us that (linux) distros that install a lot of software
that may not be used are doing a bad thing, and that users want just
the bare bones plus an easy installer (more on that later).
With hard-disks being huge compared even to a quite thorough linux-based system plus KDE plus other apps, it strikes me that for most people using desktops it would be good to have many pacakges installed at once along with the operating system. It does little to slow anything down, takes a small amount of a hard-disk, yet saves time in installing things later.
Anyway, it's nice to have the option of a small system.
"Software must be available, and easily installed."
I really don't see what can be difficult about the software installation
within, say, Mandrake, Fedora and Suse. For popular Free Software packages, just start up the software management gui from the desktop menu, click the
desired application (or type its name to search for it) then say "ok" to installing it and all dependencies. For installing proprietary software, use its own installer -- it might not always be much good, but would it be better on any other type of system? For unusual packages, compile them yourself -- PC-BSD presumably wouldn't offer more than the thousands of packages offered by popular linux distributions, unless it uses BSD ports in which case compilation will be needed (time consuming, even if automated).
Good luck to them, anyway. It would be nice to see more of a BSD balance in the free-software market.
Again people come and say it's so easy to install RPMs. It is not - because it does not always work! There is still a dependancy hell (Mandrake). When Linux has binaries that can be installed as easily as MacOS X installs new software, we're there. Right now, installing software in Linux is a system level task, and not like copying files.
Installing application software should be as easy as copying a file. System software is another story -- but the point remains.
I'm a debian user, moving from Gentoo just recently (my RAM is buggy and nukes GCC at times, so I'm better off with pre compiled packages). Debian does work 90% as advertised, but also goes into locks sometimes where a dpkg command line session is the only way to fix things. Linux and the reliance on packaging systems spell it all out - linux and software installation is complicated.
Let me give an example of how ready linux is or is not. Try to use a Linux system without a command line for a month. Install new software, set up new server software etc. You won't get by the first week.
>so easy to install RPMs. It is not - because it does not always work!
That's plain wrong, as matter of fact I actually installed a RPM right now. One click in the filemanger, type root password and confirm with two more clicks. How hard can it be. Installing from the packagemanger are even more simple.
When installing RPMs there are ONE important thing you have to get right, the RPM has to be made for the system you are going to install it on. Installing random RPMs are will result in problems, but the solution are rather simple. Are you running Suse, don't download and install mandriva RPMs. Most windows users mange to do nearly the same thing, when running win200 they use the exe's labled win2000 not the win95 or XP versions.
>Try to use a Linux system without a command line for a month.
>Install new software, set up new server software etc.
>You won't get by the first week.
You now can consider Linux readiness for proved, I can easily run Linux for a year whitout the commandline.
Installing new software - GUI packagemanger.
Set up server software - Using a editor for configfiles, no need to use cli. starting and stopping services also done from a GUI.
I really hate to go offtopic but felt that I should put my 2 cents in.
Using rpm's has some serious issues with dependencies, but then there is debians apt system , which I have yet to have an issue with.
Anyway I have yet to see bsd as a proven viable alternative to windows or linux. Should be interesting to see where this heads.
Using RPMs has no more dependency issues than using .deb files.
Ok, maybe if you consider "suggested" to be a feature, they have a small difference in dependency issues.
If you want to use apt, use apt4rpm , and compare similar things.
I agree with all the points made on the PC-BSD web page. The problem with most of the commentators on this forum is a lack of perspective. We are techies, maybe professional sysadmins, and what is easy for us is terrifying to a casual computer user.
Us techies can install software from source, change spec files or create soft links to non-existant versions of libraries to escape from rpm hell. But my 70 yr. old aunt, who can barely turn on her computer--you can't seriously expect a user like her to do that.
Casual (and the right word is really "fearful") computer users are quickly paralyzed when faced with the choice between 2 newsreaders, 3 email clients and 4 web browsers. When we insist that distros have to offer 'choice' and 'configurability', we are wittingly or unwittingly enforcing a digital divide between the technologically accomplished and the rest of the population. Efforts like PC-BSD are an attempt to break down the technological class system that now exists. I think that's a good thing.
Supporting different distributions is a pain, but it hardly ever results in code needing to be written, instead its just a matter of supporting users getting the correct prereq's installed. And from a OSS developers view, FreeBSD is just another distro to support. Ironically probably one of the few 'distros' that actually requires rewriting a bit code in case of invading Linuxisms. Which isn't fair, but life isn't fair. :)
Being a stable platform to make binaries for is an advantage certainly (its why companies shell out the big bucks for Redhat etc). But not having such a guarantee isn't as bad as they're making it out.
Unfortunately, the fragmentation problem is real; it is not just FUD. What we have is not, as far as the average consume is concerned, a Linux OS but rather three major RPM based distros based on Linux, several Debian based distros, and bunch of minor distros and they are not compatible with each other. This is fragmentation and it *is* a real problem. Perhaps it is one of the reasons that DIY (e.g. Linux from Scratch) has become more popular.
OTOH, there is more than one distro for BSD *NIX. So, the question then becomes: are the various BSD flavors totally compatible or does BSD have the same problem (although on a smaller scale).
Fragmentation is one of the major problem with *NIX and there doesn't seem to be any immediate solution to the problem on the horizon. A KDE Linux distro has been suggested as a possible solution to the problem, but this would only solve part of the problem.
>Fragmentation is one of the major problem with *NIX and there doesn't seem to be >any immediate solution to the problem on the horizon. A KDE Linux distro has been >suggested as a possible solution to the problem, but this would only solve part >of the problem.
How does adding yet another incompatable distro solve the problem ?
> How does adding yet another incompatible distro solve the problem ?
As I said, it will only solve part of the problem.
The idea is to make a generic PC-GNU-Linux distro that doesn't have the extra "features" that cause the compatibility problems.
In case this isn't clear, the incompatibilities are caused because the three major RPM based distros make changes to a generic installation and add extra "features" that conflict with KDE. These are the things that cause problems for application developers.
The issues comes down to this, there is no good standard which allows one to clearly define what an installation requires.
As soon as someone comes up with a format which allows one to create a package clearly stating what they support and what they don't, quickly and easily, that can then be easily used to figure out and resolve dependencies, we'll be set.
This doesn't exist. And it goes beyond just getting the software installed, there is a matter of having the software configured. So we need to be able to have an intelligent, user instructable system.
As a programmer, I should be able to say, this program needs libraries x, y and z. It needs the following services a, b and c. It needs from the user pieces of information d, e and f. This should be as generic as possible, some of these maybe specific kde while others maybe more generic, like require support for a relax ng XML validator. There also needs to be support for optional features, not everything might be desired.
On the user side, I should be able to state where it goes, trivially. Like dragging and dropping it somewhere, then maybe right clicking on it and saying install. My system should automatically start negotiating with it, fulfilling it's requests, asking me the necessary questions while putting in smart suggested responses wherever possible. Uninstallation should be the similarly easy. Each installed application should be registered with the system, multiple versions installed on the same system should be supported. Uninstallation, should be easy, the user should either be able to go to a virtual application directory or some such and tell it to uninstall or go to the system configuration and tell it to buzz off. More over, the system should be able to interpret the requirements specified by the programmer and fulfill them; however the system deems it necessary. This means more generic description of services and resources and less hardcoding of paths; moreover, tools to get around it.
This isn't far away, zero-install.sf.net does this for the most part. The problem is the fact that it requires a kernel module, though they're moving away from that, IIRC. The system still needs more functionality, but it'll get there soon enough, hopefully.
There also needs to be work on build systems, to facilitate building packages for this "format", easily specifying things and/or gleaning it from the code/environment. This will encounter a lot of resistance because there are a number of hackers unwilling to change, but that'll come with time.
Just as an interesting aside:
It'd be interesting if under KDevelop someone said, "heh, lets's make a packaging system" that easy to package for and meets these goals (insert goals for a good packaging system). It would be nothing more than building the actual packages, the installation and management would be left alone entirely. At first no one would support it, which is fine, but it'd be interesting to see how folks would adopt it. When the time is right, export this ability into a library allowing other IDEs to support it, freedesktop.org might be a good meeting place for KDevelop, Ajunta and countless others. At the end there will be a really nice packaging system, that creates packages and allows application, library, services... developers to easily build a package and say, "Here use this."
After it gains momentum, there are bound to be groups who'll go "heh, that's awesome". And they'll work on the installation and management part. The best thing will be that packaging will move upstream. No more developer, packager, user. It'll simply be a developer puts out software, a users uses it, without thinking about the distro.
Sadly, I'm still not knowledgable enough to figure out how to do this.
I think this is awesome. I love FreeBSD, but sometimes I wish the installation would be more graphical, and that software like KDE, mplayer etc would be selected by default.
This is just perfect. I'm gonna try it out!
Go BSD!
P.S. I use Linux from time to time, but I hate the fact that it comes with 3 billion dependencies/libraries/programs installed. Probably the most annoying thing about Linux is the fact that an application compiled on one distribution does not work on different one. This is very annoying. I really don't understand why none of the distributions want to use LSB (linux standard base?). That is their biggest mistake.
Oh, SuSE is the hands down best Linux distribution by the way.
> I really don't understand why none of the distributions want to use LSB
> (linux standard base?).
They do use the LSB. They invented it. The fact is that the LSB does not solve the problem -- very unfortunate!
>P.S. I use Linux from time to time, but I hate the fact that it comes with 3 >billion dependencies/libraries/programs installed
Try Gentoo...u install only what u want and it uses a ports like system (portage)
so that apps r compiled for your system..it also resolves dependances.
>an application compiled on one distribution does not work on different one.
How well does a application compiled on FreeBSD 5.3 work on 4.11? Or on OpenBSD or NetBSD?
The negative statements about Linux are true for the most part. So I don't see this as FUD, just a criticism. I suspect that they had pulled their hair out one too many times with library issues and are just explaining why they choose FBSD. I switched to FreeBSD from Linux (Red Hat/Mandrake) about 5 years ago because of the library issues they describe (they are still with us after 5 years with no resolution n site). I've tried on several occasions since then to install different Linux distro's but have always came up against the same library issues even with software on the same CD distrobution! In the same period, I've installed FBSD countless times and almost never had the library issues they describe.
I hope they keep the ports system around as this is one of the best and most reliable application installation methods I've found.
I'm my mind, libraries are the most compelling reason currently for someone to not use Linux. Linux (or any other OS) will never be popular with the masses unless the installation of software is painless and will not break the software already installed. Mac OS X does a great job of installing software! just copy it to your hard drive!
I wish them all good luck with this project.
My US$.02
Well, as an IT support person I have to say that contemporary linux distributions (incl. Red Hat Enterprise / Fedora / Debian / Gentoo) make it extremely easy to install and keep software up-to-date, presuming it can be found in the repositories used.
The package management software handles dependencies automatically (RHEL/Fedora: yum, Debian: apt-get, Gentoo: emerge), and I never have to worry about dependencies; you just need to administer some caution in picking repositories to make sure they are compatible.
I have a couple of dozen Fedora-based computers under my administration, and the only thing I have to do is update the distribution once a year or so; the computers install other updates themselves.
In contrast, the OS X and Windows computers need constant attention in the form of having to run them through every week or so and install security updates to the software installed; at least this is the case without any central administration requiring servers and server software amounting to about 7000.
...you just need to administer some caution in picking repositories to make sure they are compatible.
Therein lies one of the problems, most people in the masses (or geeksville for that matter) don't have the time, desire or knowledge to be choosy with the repositories, they want to install the apps regardless of library dependencies. Not everybody is an IT guru. On of the best design issues with FBSD is that the ports are tied to the OS. You only run in to trouble if you update your ports with out updating your OS or vise versa. If you keep everything in sync, it's rock solid.
>In contrast, the OS X and Windows computers need constant attention in the form of having to run them through every week or so and install security updates to the software installed; at least this is the case without any central administration requiring servers and server software amounting to about 7000€
From a family point of view, i wouldn't put windows and OS X in the same league at all. I punted windows several years ago (because I had to rebuild the OS every three months or so) and put my family on OS X. This is a dream to administer compared to windows. The updates are much less frequent ( << per week basis) and I have yet to break installed software with an update (although I understand it does happen on occasion) and I won't get into the lack of anti-virus software needed... My four year old can play to his hearts content in his own login without the worry of him destroying the OS installation. Which my older son did many times with windows.
TBM
> Therein lies one of the problems, most people in the masses (or geeksville for that matter) don't have the time, desire or knowledge to be choosy with the repositories, they want to install the apps regardless of library dependencies. Not everybody is an IT guru. On of the best design issues with FBSD is that the ports are tied to the OS. You only run in to trouble if you update your ports with out updating your OS or vise versa. If you keep everything in sync, it's rock solid.
FUD and illogic. Let's discuss both running a Linux and FreeBSD systems with unofficial package sources, or let's not. These sorts of arguments are popular amongst the BSD zealots/trolls, but real people with the intelligence to deal with the systems shouldn't fall for this sort of B.S. argument.
Excellent how the quoted "one of the most full-featured, easy to use window managers" contains a link to "whatiskde" explaining how much of a window manager KDE is. =D
My guess is you didn't read the "did-I-tell-everyone-that-kde-is-no-windowmanager dept" thing :)
It is a FUD. It is a M$ talk actually. It must be be a FUD when one uses alledged weaknesses of other systems to promote his own - it's completely and utterly childish, as if they were saying "Look, he can't do it, but I can!"... And there is a point people with broadband connections can't see - the importance of fast net access. I'm using Kubuntu currently, and I'm on 32.1 kbs dial-up (connection limit due to the nature of telephony infrastructure) - how the hell am I supposed to apt-get anyhing, since the first thing to be done is apt-get update? And fast net access would solve this and other problems (broken packages...), because it automates the apt-get process, which takes care of dependancies, and all other shit... And the same goes for *BSD, and their ports system, it is unusable without the fast connection. So, many offline troubles can be solved online. OTOH, it would be nice if someone decided where certain packages would actually go, and took away some of our overrated freedom, which we abuse daily. KDE in /usr? Ok. All "official" distros come with this set of libs? Nice. Let's make things a bit less complicated, and here you go...
I installed pcbsd in an old AMD K6 500mhz machine with 192 megs
of memory. It ran very well with none of the stalls that I experienced
Debian on the same machine. However it did not support my wireless card yet
so I will wait until version 1 comes out before I put it on this laptop.
I also observed that when running minicom for a serial communication application that it recovered successfully from a bad closing of the program.
Debian would have a serial port crash after such an event. The only solution
was to reboot the computer. However under Debian minicom could be closed badly and the serial port would not hang. I suspect that BSD is more stable
than linux.
There were a few bugs in pcbsd but not many and everything was well crafted and integrated. Good job ... looking forward to a true release.
In my last post I meant to say that it was PC-BSD that did not cause the serial port to crash under minicom. Linux (Debian Knoppix) was very unstable in this regard. Sorry about that ... I called it "Debian" that was the good guy.
I like using Debian and it is the desktop of choice for me. Using Knoppix to do an install is remarkable. PC-BSD is the second easiest install.
Ian.
than linux.
First of all KDE is quite the promising desktop manager. It's quite intuitive addressing a wide array of common issues faced on a daily basis by the desk-top power-user. There are issues with KDE and general handling but that is another time and place. In summation the KDE project is extremely able and adept at fore-thought from the project level which is not a lite tasking by any measure.
Outstanding work.
On to brass tacks with some of the comparisons made here on the pages of the KDE project referencing PC-BSD and Kubuntu. I will list my arguments in a numbered bulletted list for ease of reference and any response to the arguments may be posted, obviously, and/or e-Mailed to my yahoo! address for dignified considerations.
1.) Recent bug reports for KUbuntu and XUbuntu posted at their respective sites disclose security leaks and vulnerabilities regarding: the usage of the specialized those Ubuntu variants distributed with the appropriate desktop managers KDE and X Windows. These security issues seem to be very persistent with these distributions as it has been at a minimum of two release periods that these bugs have gone unanswered. The greatest majority of the security risks relate to *buffer over-run type flaws in security management and access to personal data from phishing and data-mining attacks.
2.) Current security testing by a third-party group at Omni-Nerd has found slackware esque security issues with deep reaching vulnerabilities with the UBUNTU system regarding the desktop server. This means simply that Ubuntu being the operating system brings suspicion to the standard desktop distribution as well. These results coupled with the fact that Kubuntu is merely Ubuntu pre-packed as standard with KDE is cause for great concern with respect to security.
3.) Free BSD is a de-facto standard when dealing with the Berkely Software Distribution and has been established for much longer than Kubuntu. The assertion that BSD is following anything Linux-based is foolish and prone to evangelical styled preachings. ^Linus has stated this much himself being a proven Unix/BSD fan. We need to watch making comparisons that implicate favoritism over fact.
4.) It was stated that the KDE desktop environment was to deep into system process handling and it posed a threat to user-safety regarding systems interaction. It was also clarified that several K-branded tools also posed this same type of threat and that the issue of separation of implementation from interface was being amatuerishly ignored.
I have heard many reports through-out the last three years that KDE has been facing and actively correcting the problems associated with this level of concern. Unfortunately the current level of public awareness regarding KDE is summated in "...cause it's cool." There has been a detrimental drop off in the interest of KDE's security and how it is supposed to actively protect and provide for the end-user. The communities are supportive KDE in general regardless of working preference to desktop-managers but are ignorant to real world issues.
The mentioning of security and real-world issues is a serious platform that intimidates and confuses most but it still has to be addressed. A lamen fashioned delivery for normalized public consumption would certainly ease many users into a higher understanding of this genre. More exposure to the masses, better issue/bug reporting, and a stronger breed of user will follow with certainty. White papers serve no one but the smallest percentile of hard-core developers that can stomach them.
The lack of awareness and infatuation with graphical appeal as the predominant deciding factor preciptory to choosing a desk-top management system is indicative that the user-base is getting younger. This is good, very good, but this brings into the light of necessity that these younger-bux need to be brought-up with the proper education constituent to DTM's like KDE. This knowledgability will carry over into other fundamental aspects of their existence increasing not only user satisfaction but real world value of life issues as well.
Anything addressed on a social level of this magnitude is sure to have concern and ramification through feedback to the point of origin. Society is relative to the individual and that same society will influence the individual in question. Whether you want to be a psychologist or a game player the relativity of sociology and psychology is real and unavoidable. The key term here is the KDE SOCIETY of users is a society with the same framework and standards of any other society. The underpinnings of any valid society/social group are rudementary and well known as: order, security, and connection/feedback.
I was a little winded or verbose with my discertation on a few subjects but I think it's fair to assume that several people will be wiser for the blather.
SIDEBAR:
The tests conducted at OmniNerd addressing security squared off on various operating systems including: Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Mac Apple OS Classic, Mac Apple OS X Tiger, Mac OS X Server, Solaris 10, FreeBSd 6.2, Ubuntu Desktop Server, SuSE Enterprise 10, Slackware Linux 11, Red Hat Fedora Core 6. The lab was conducted emulating a wide range of known threats that plagued the entire year 2006. There is absolutely no reason why some of these systems failed and miserably at that. The winners are few and span the genre.
Here is the quickie results:
FreeBSD 6.2:
Port scan I.D. returned all port I.D.'s
OS was identified as FreeBSD
System was still impenetrable with the standard install with server
configurations. Really good.
FreeBSD isn't crap when it comes to masking its identity like Red Hat
but it is just as solid in the system. FreeBSD needs to work on this
as well as masking ports big time. Other than these two flaws BSD is
here and now.
Windows Vista:
Vista can be identified as Vista - not good as attackers can I.D. your
system, but manageable with the right defense. This was without the
firewall running too...that's still good.
No other faults were noted.
Less than perfect but real close.
Red Hat Fedora Core 6:
RHFC was identified as Linux version 2.x, this being entirely wrong
gives an attacker the wrong information. This shouldn't even be
known but it is far better than proper identification as there are
hundreds of linux distros that could be tagged as 2.x
Perfect, perfect, perfect. I'm not a big Red Hat fan as of late but...
Red Hat and FreeBSD based PC-BSD can both utilize KDE allowing a user the cutting edge and flashy desktop environment with state of the art systems security and functionality. PC-BSD has the OpenBSD projects highly regarded firewall internally handled the same way Red Hat handles their firewall. OpenBSD and Red Hat both are renowned for their security features and excellent firewall services comparible to noone. Take your pick and enjoy your safety!
CLOSING:
It is without surprise that KDE has matured beyond every expectation that I have had in the four years that I've been eyeballing various Linux and Unix distros. It is wonderful that the Unix-inspired BSD community has finally accepted an excellent line-up of desk-top managers like KDE for pre-packaged distribution. High praise to the BSD collaboration for showing the signs of intelligent life looking for a means to deliver expression without fore-going functionality.
Any response to the issues outlined above in my statement would best serve the community as being posted on this page so as to be visible by everyone that visits this site. I feel, as I am sure many others do, that KDE isn't a cute desk-top skinning application and thus needs to be understood. KDE taken a bit more seriously will enable the end-user to really reap the rewards of using such a management system. KDE is alot more than a place to put your MP3 player and that is a fact.
I also would like to emplore any and every response possible from the KDE development staff on the topics that I've addressed here. Everything knowledgable will make the community stronger and wiser for the effort with exponential benefit. I am aware of the fact that you all at the KDE laboratory are always engaged in one activity or another and get very involved with your taskings.
There should be some high-profile linkage to such areas that might presently present this data for the discerning KDE patron. This type of exposure will help the staff of KDE to remove themselves of any liability with OS ditributions that employ KDE that might be the origin of fault. Problems arising with the implementation of the KDE environment most likely are due to the developer(s) that compiled the Linux distribution and that incompetence should not reflect back on KDE creating back-lash and misplaced ill-will.
*Buffer over-run is where your system geats overtaken and malicious scripts are then able to be run. Some buffer over-run scripts include desktop and system specific VIRUSES.
*Phishing is spyware that can be run against your system over a network like the world wide web. Very bad news indeed.
^Linus Torvalds is the man responsible for the creation of the Linux Kernel. Torvalds currently heads the development team responsible for the continued development of the Linux Kernel and its Unix like functionality.
p.s. I use PC-BSD, DreamLinux, DamnSmall Linux, and winXP for simpler reasons.
Take care.