Quote:
Originally Posted by Oliver_H
I have been very vocal on that matter, but I don't see the relevance of FreeBSD on the desktop anymore. Alas I'm not even able to persuade my wife or sister anymore. There is the lack of Flash, the so-so Wine port (there are some applications which don't run in FreeBSD wine as supposed), problems with some default devices (like mice, keyboards) and so on. It's my desktop, it's the desktop for many people who can cope with it, but it's far from the desktop for the 'masses'. But there is Linux and it fills the gap. It's maybe not the best, but at least it's open source like FreeBSD :-)
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Sorry for the late replay but I just noticed your message. I noticed that DesktopBSD is dead which I expected after Peter graduated. However Desktop-tools might be an interesting legacy if it becomes the part of the FreeBSD base like NanoBSD.
Out of 17 currently active FreeBSD projects
m0n0wall
FreeNAS
pfSense
AskoziaPBX
NanoBSD
TrustedBSD
FreeSBIE
Frenzy
PC-BSD
TrueBSD
RoFreeSBIE
MidnightBSD
HamFreeSBIE
miniBSD
DesktopBSD
RelaxBSD
GuLIC-BSD
only first four are really, really interesting. Rescue tools provided by LiveCD Frenzy should be provide by FreeBSD project itself. The same goes for LiveCD of the FreeSBIE type which is more appropriate for hardware testing. I am not sure what is the state freesbie port (I mean tools for creating LiveCD) but I would imagine that is not very off production level.
PCBSD will die like DesktopBSD due to the stubborn refusal by PCBSD developers to admit that PBIs are BIG mistake and creating the viable GUI for packages and ports. The focus of PCBSD should have been work on desktop
features of the FreeBSD like porting proprietary drivers for printing and scanning (sane-backends are half functional on FreeBSD, HLIP is in sad state)
as well as adding the WI driver (it is enough to port OpenBSD drivers) as well
as USB camera drivers (porting uvideo driver from OpenBSD comes to mind).
I thought I would never say this but OpenBSD has much more to offer to competent Unix user on a desktop than FreeBSD.
More network, audio drivers plus uvideo driver. WPA works. DRM enabled.
Ekiga actually works with video and PJSUA just rocks.
From November Java will be just regular binary package.
Gnash is almost ready for the production. The Wine release is almost ported which will
enable people to use Oliver Harold's trick and use Flash in the Window's browser. OpenOffice is just a regular binary package unlike FreeBSD where is a pain to compile. The GUI tool for managing ports and packages is available as a package. TeXLive is actually ported and stale ports are constantly cut from the ports three unlike FreeBSD containing thousands of legacy ports.
Qemu works. If we add much more user friendliness of OpenBSD which doesn't require kernel compilation for things like HPLIP or loading modules even for audio and WiFi the choice should be clear.
OpenBSD has far better installer than FreeBSD and installing dozen of similar systems is just a snap using siteXX.tgz.
It seems that relevant FreeBSD based desktop distro remains an illusive goal as Linux monopoly over the Windows on the desktop.