I am writing this after playing around with FreeBSD for quite some time and I can safely say I know/know where to look for about what I am doing. I was really excited about the new version of FreeBSD that came out a few days ago and thought this would be the release I would give my friends to try. But that was not to be.

Installation --
This is where the OS fails and it fails miserably. We have 3 disks and probably the worst index ever built. If you plan to install KDE on the box, you will literally have to change between disks for about 40+ times. Since I was doing it on VirtualBox, this was easy enough as a right click but having done this on beige boxes, I know its not cool. Why not make a list of the packages that are to be installed, get the list from the master index and finish one disk at a time. But no, we install one package at a time, probably alphabetically , and ask the user for CD1, then CD3, then CD1, then CD2 and waste about 2 hours of his life.

When most of the world is going towards a graphical, clean, minimal questions asked, fast installer, FreeBSD is stuck with a ncurses type installer that asks you so many questions.. that its not even funny. Dont get me wrong, I love the command line and the power it gives you, but first the team needs to really focus whats their target audience and accordingly set defaults while installation and provide ways to edit the values later on.

After quiting the installer after 2 hours, I deleted the iso files I downloaded and deleted the virtual machine. I think the main problem with FreeBSD is that it does not know where the focus should be -- Desktop/Server, or maybe they do and want to make it difficult enough for people to not install on their desktops It tries to be a Fedora of the linux world, desktop+server on the same disk. But surely Fedora pulls it off far better.

Obviously there are no comments about the next part. Maybe a few worthless things worth mentioning are, it uses csh than the far better/feature rich bash. It uses vi, which is the greatest threat to humanity instead of vim. It still presents me with a shell thats best suited for a 12" monochrome monitor. Probably the one thing thats going for FreeBSD is the ports collection. Dependency handling at its best.

I think a DVD release and a GUI/fast installer will make it a viable choice for desktops.
I will keep the 6.1 server that I have and try to resist the temptation of installing it on my laptop.
Maybe the next release will be the one I give to my friends and family to try out.

Yeah, OK, but why uses cds to install when you can get the bootonly iso, which will pull everything from the net. It may take a bit longer but at least you're not constantly swapping disks. And there are desktop oriented spin-offs too.

I guess you should try openBSD next Even an ncurses installer is asking too much in that case...

Or... install a base system from the CDs and then pkg_add the DE afterwards.

Works ok for me and (I suspect) the audience the devs are targeting.

Seems to me they've already done that.

I'm pretty sure FreeBSD is not "[trying] to be a Fedora of the linux world".

I prefer tcsh for an interactive shell. If you prefer bash, install it from ports...

Are your friends and family all geeks?

Doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose of churning out 3 CDs ? You might as well have a single business card sized iso on your mirrors and forget about it

No comments

Yes, this is fucked up really, but most people just get CD1, install minimal base, rebuild world and adds everything thru ports, I also admit using DVD version from torrents, works a lot better.

FreeBSD team started to work on graphical installer looong ago, a C/python back-end + ncurses or GTK (or any other) front-end. Here you can check it out: [ http://wiki.freebsd.org/?action=full...value=finstall ]

FreBSD developers focus on servers, but also many contributors and developers made a lot of work to make FreeBSD more suitable for desktop.

Nobody forces you to use csh, nor vi, you can install both bash or even a lot better the bash zsh or fish shell along with vim, but FreBSD base system is kept as big as needed and as small as posible, and every UNIX admin will feel comfortable with vi or csh.

As I mentioned earlier DVD are on torrents, also I would recommend upgrade to 6.3.

If you want to compare oranges to oranges, then compare Fedora to PCBSD or DesktopBSD.

Hi, I'm always glad to hear my DVD has gotten quite a bit of press. Indeed get my DVD from http://thepiratebay.org/tor/4051965/...VD_(not_5_CD_s)

The FreeBSD foundation has quite a lot of old school habits to them by default, like vi, csh, finstall and CD only distribution; and it's quite a shame they stay a bit too far into their roots.

The trick to make 7.0-RELEASE is to use the ULE_SCHED scheduler in a kernel recompilation for good scheduling in desktop use after you get the desktop env running and compile ports like crazy in parallel.

Enjoy !!

That pretty much sums it up. Common guys, you have a gold mine at your hands, the fact that I downloaded the ISO files and tried to install it shows that I want it to succeed. Some of you may think I just wanted to rant about it and took this as a platform but no that is not the case. I love my 6.1 server -- which will soon be upgraded and I used to run the 6.0 release on my old Armada E500 laptop a while back. But I absolutely loved the thing. Rock solid and fast. I want FreeBSD to come to the desktop.

But you see, instead of just ranting, I actually took action by jumping on IRC, asking for collective opinion, and creating the DVD. I was primarily for my own use, but since many others wanted such a beauty/beast, I was more than happy to make a few people's days more enjoyable

They are doing some things right, so we just need to take it in the spirit of its FOSS nature, and augment it that much more by our own added touch, I'd prefer more of a FreeBSD DesktopBSD mix monster that takes from both (GUI centric[desktop&install], user friendly default program choices, DVD release) but just have it as a middleman creation and give a more focus on user customization help and not just be a be-all desktop release, I guess my niche is in between the massive tits of both FreeBSD and DesktopBSD lol.... you know, I'm really starting to like this forum

Enjoy !!

I agree with the CDs thing, having to swap the 3 CDs all the time is very annoying and time waster. I know there are DVDs .isos available on Bit torrent, but I am not going to trust the security of my system to bit torrent since those are not official releases.

The FreeBSD developers should really sort this out.

Anyone looking for a friendly to install FreeBSD I reccomend DesktopBSD, one live DVD that can be installed easily on the HD.

Well just to inform you, the DVD torrent I refer to (and what many refer to) is MY release , and I would gladly paste my process for you to see for yourself on what I did, just let me know, and its only the i386 version spawned from the reason I made it for my own use in place of swapping the CD's like a madman for an hour. I'm by no means a pro, and I don't have mad C coding skills to modify finstall to install malicious software somehow lol. You don't have to trust me, but about 3000 people have and I've basically been given 100% positive feedback. I made the DVD in collaboration on the FreeBSD IRC Freenode channel, and it has surely spread from peoples use and liking of it. Give it a try, you don't have to trust me, but I'm a pretty nice guy I think lol, so give it a try if you wanna rate it for yourself before judging the book by its cover.

Here is an article of my release by a nice BSD new site I gave more information on the torrent sites that you may enjoy:
http://www.freebsdos.com/news/2008/0...eebsd-70-dvds/

Thanks and Enjoy!

Here is a method by Dru Lavigne --
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/unix/bsd/...d-70-dvd-22791

She is a well known author in the BSD circles. Go ahead make your own.

[quote=kdrlx;3106717]Doesn't that kinda defeat the purpose of churning out 3 CDs ? You might as well have a single business card sized iso on your mirrors and forget about it
/quote]

Yes it does defeat whatever you thought was the purpose. I've always used the bootonly which is on the mirrors.

I do agree with you on that. I have done a full FreeBSD install, and did not like switching from Disc3 to Disc1, etc.

This is where I have to disagree. I like nccurses. It is functional, and it seems to me that the FreeBSD installer is very thoughrough, nothing wrong with that. In some ways I kinda like the old-school of doing things. I like the way FreeBSD is in some ways, because you learn as you go. If you are just looking for a desktop oriented BSD, there is PC-BSD and Desktop-BSD (google), and both will provide you with a more user-oriented installation-setup, and ready-to-go enviornments.

I myself haven't fully worked in BSD. For the most part, I just try out FreeBSD out of curiousity, but for now I am stuck with Slackware (thats a good thing for me), but with that experience, I guess thats why I also wanted to know how to work in FreeBSD. I never actually installed FreeBSD on a PC before, just in a virtual enviornment.