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 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 the directions from the same page to get X to load right into KDE... startx would in fact start X with twm, but... there was absolutely no keyboard *or* mouse support once I was in X.
Seriously, what the hell am I doing wrong?! I can use Slackware, Debian, CentOS--hell, nearly every major Linux distribution aside from Arch, Gentoo and Crux... but when it comes to the BSDs I can never get anywhere.
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: (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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:only recommended if you need to stay on 8.x (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 the directions from the same page to get X to load right into KDE... startx would in fact start X with twm, but... there was absolutely no keyboard *or* mouse support once I was in X.
Seriously, what the hell am I doing wrong?! I can use Slackware, Debian, CentOS--hell, nearly every major Linux distribution aside from Arch, Gentoo and Crux... but when it comes to the BSDs I can never get anywhere.