Most desktop users won't want to install this release. FreeBSD 9.1 was released in December 2012, and is the most recent stable release. This 8.4 release is a point release in the still-maintained 8.x series, intended for people currently running 8.3 who for one reason or another don't wish to upgrade to 9.x yet, but who do want an incremental upgrade.
Most desktop users won't want to install this release.
How many people run FreeBSD on their desktop? (No, I'm not counting OSX.) The big selling point of FreeBSD is its robust support for ZFS, which makes it great for a file storage server. But it's an extremely marginal and weird choice for a desktop environment.
"How many people run FreeBSD on their desktop?" No one really knows for sure. I count as 1. If (and only if) your hardware can run it, you're better off running a FreeBSD desktop than Linux. If your hardware is incompatible with FreeBSD, then run Linux. If the hardware won't run Linux, then either run Windows or buy new hardware. (Don't run Windows). As long as you're buying new hardware make sure you can run FreeBSD on it.
Call me crazy, dumb, or just stuck with the Linux way, but I think I'd have to re-learn a decent amount to be able to successfully run and maintain FreeBSD on my desktop. Sure, I learned many of the UNIX basics of the command line before switching from Windows, but I think there are a lot of things that would seriously stump me. For example, things like "mount -o loop" to mount an image file as a loop device and "free -m" to get a quick reading of memory usage are much different, and not exactly easier. I just couldn't get used to the package management tools, and I'm no guru at compiling (in fact, I hate it...).
It would be nice if Linux distributions were like this though; 8.x has a legacy base OS with what seems to be extremely up-to-date packages otherwise. With Linux it's basically either all (Arch, Gentoo) or nothing (Debian, CentOS) as far as updates to the non-system packages go. It seems that openSUSE does major upgrades on just a few regular packages (mainly web browsers) and I remember reading that Ubuntu was going to too, but it's nothing compared to what FreeBSD does. FreeBSD's support really is good... and I heard that its separation of system and userland makes complete system upgrades work well. That said... I intend to someday learn it better to be able to use it. One of these days I intend to figure it out...
I tried PC-BSD, but I'm not too much of a fan of the way it does some of the things it does... not to mention it comes across as incredibly bloated to me. In theory, I like the way plain FreeBSD is set up.
I tried and failed yet again to get a full KDE desktop up and running. The directions I used--a page on the FreeBSD site found through a web search--simply said "pkg_add -r kde4". Nope, nothing. Did it actually install X.org? Didn't seem so, so I logged back in as root and did that. Logged back out and in again as my user, and entered startx: returned endless "failed to load module" warnings, no drivers available, no screens found, unable to connect/connection refused, blah blah blah. Before following
You see but you do not observe.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
only recommended if you need to stay on 8.x (Score:5, Informative)
Most desktop users won't want to install this release. FreeBSD 9.1 was released in December 2012, and is the most recent stable release. This 8.4 release is a point release in the still-maintained 8.x series, intended for people currently running 8.3 who for one reason or another don't wish to upgrade to 9.x yet, but who do want an incremental upgrade.
Re: (Score:2)
Most desktop users won't want to install this release.
How many people run FreeBSD on their desktop? (No, I'm not counting OSX.) The big selling point of FreeBSD is its robust support for ZFS, which makes it great for a file storage server. But it's an extremely marginal and weird choice for a desktop environment.
Re: (Score:2)
"How many people run FreeBSD on their desktop?"
No one really knows for sure. I count as 1.
If (and only if) your hardware can run it, you're better off running a FreeBSD desktop than Linux. If your hardware is incompatible with FreeBSD, then run Linux. If the hardware won't run Linux, then either run Windows or buy new hardware. (Don't run Windows). As long as you're buying new hardware make sure you can run FreeBSD on it.
Re:only recommended if you need to stay on 8.x (Score:2)
Call me crazy, dumb, or just stuck with the Linux way, but I think I'd have to re-learn a decent amount to be able to successfully run and maintain FreeBSD on my desktop. Sure, I learned many of the UNIX basics of the command line before switching from Windows, but I think there are a lot of things that would seriously stump me. For example, things like "mount -o loop" to mount an image file as a loop device and "free -m" to get a quick reading of memory usage are much different, and not exactly easier. I just couldn't get used to the package management tools, and I'm no guru at compiling (in fact, I hate it...).
It would be nice if Linux distributions were like this though; 8.x has a legacy base OS with what seems to be extremely up-to-date packages otherwise. With Linux it's basically either all (Arch, Gentoo) or nothing (Debian, CentOS) as far as updates to the non-system packages go. It seems that openSUSE does major upgrades on just a few regular packages (mainly web browsers) and I remember reading that Ubuntu was going to too, but it's nothing compared to what FreeBSD does. FreeBSD's support really is good... and I heard that its separation of system and userland makes complete system upgrades work well. That said... I intend to someday learn it better to be able to use it. One of these days I intend to figure it out...
I tried PC-BSD, but I'm not too much of a fan of the way it does some of the things it does... not to mention it comes across as incredibly bloated to me. In theory, I like the way plain FreeBSD is set up.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I tried and failed yet again to get a full KDE desktop up and running. The directions I used--a page on the FreeBSD site found through a web search--simply said "pkg_add -r kde4". Nope, nothing. Did it actually install X.org? Didn't seem so, so I logged back in as root and did that. Logged back out and in again as my user, and entered startx: returned endless "failed to load module" warnings, no drivers available, no screens found, unable to connect/connection refused, blah blah blah. Before following