It probably has a lot to do with FreeBSD having a much more focused niche. FreeBSD is really tuned primarily for servers. You can use it on your desktop, but that's not really it's main purpose. Linux on the other hand, has really branched out. It has desktop distros, server distros, embedded distros, and probably a couple other areas I haven't thought of.
You think so? I dunno, it seems to me that FreeBSD suits the desktop role really well; I use it for preference. Especially when you consider that the only OS with more packages is Debian, it makes sense that it can fit a desktop role extremely nicely.
How many of those packages are desktop packages? Seems like a odd metric to just compare the number of packages as to how well an OS is suited to the desktop.
Well, I don't think I've ever installed any package from anything other than the ports system. Lots? I know I've installed everything from Gnome, XFCE and KDE, through OpenOffice and a bunch of stuff in between.
You're right that mere numbers of packages is a weird metric, but what else can we offer? FreeBSD has great performance, and has everything necessary to be either a good server *or* a good desktop. It's much like Gentoo that way -- it doesn't focus on being either one or the other, it focuses on being a solid basis. What you put on top of that basis is your choice. It honestly seems to me that the distinction between server OS and desktop OS is its own entire discussion; if we can come to a good notion of what either means, we can reach a nice conclusion. If we take the current crop of Linux desktop OSes, though, I don't see any more integration between, say, Fedora and Gnome and FreeBSD and Gnome, or Ubuntu and Gnome and FreeBSD and Gnome.
If I think about it, it does seem that Ubuntu starting with a GUI interface and letting you find the command line by yourself is more friendly to the average user; I haven't installed FreeBSD using anything other than minimal-install for so long that I don't know whether you can have a GUI start up by default. And FreeBSD's installer, whilst excellent for its audience, is less friendly to a first timer. If we take those metrics, the idea of "can I sit down and first time use it without documentation?" then a lot of the linux crop are friendlier, yeah. But the documentation *is* very hand-holdy, and very very thorough for FreeBSD. And nicely available online.
Pity this AC got a -1 for it, so I'll whore up a bit of my Karma to restate the point:
"Don't forget, there's always PC-BSD for the Linux users - simple, point'n'click installer, etc."
This isn't really flamebait, or trolling. The current trend for Linux users (especially Ubuntu users) is exactly that, sure they have the power of the command line but most everything is done through $package_manager via the GUI. To draw slightly on my own experience, my IRC channel has around 40 people in it, so yes it is a
It honestly seems to me that the distinction between server OS and desktop OS is its own entire discussion; if we can come to a good notion of what either means
I don't think the desktop/server distinction means anything anymore, and for three reasons. One, cheap commodity hardware. Two, the literal glut of software. Apache too bloated? Use lighttpd. KDE overblown? Use fluxbox. And three is (open) standards (no sniggering in the back,please.) When everything uses TCP/IP or XML or whatnot, intero
The difference is in the real-time scheduling requirements that come with a GUI. Very minor delays in GUI rendering have very perceptible impact on the snappiness of a UI. Server workloads (DB, HTTPD or whatever) have less stringent real-time requirements. Throughput ends up mattering more as long as the latency is in a reasonable range.
The reason I started using FreeBSD was because I went to the store and bought a wireless card, a linksys something or other. I got home and SuSE couldn't detect it. Neither could Ubuntu (this was around the days of Ubuntu 5.something) nor Debian. I had a friend who was a FreeBSD nut who walked me through the install and my wireless card worked straight away.
Whether desktop drivers are a good metric really depends on what hardware you own. Sometimes what you need just ain't there.
Oh really? Have you tried to use Cedega on FreeBSD? What about Wine (on FreeBSD 6 or older)? What about anything that uses NPTL?
If the emulation layer worked as 2.6, it would run everything Linux can in binary.
How about vmware? I dont think that runs on bsd either... Linux will run virtually everything bsd will (after a recompile)... And most linux apps will recompile for bsd, but bsd's linux emulation isn't perfect when it comes to precompiled linux apps... There's also hardware support, does bsd have drivers for modern ati videocards yet? I know the linux drivers suck, but its slightly better than nothing.
Although FreeBSD ports contain all the major "Desktop" packages, I don't think it's a "Desktop OS". Mainly because the "base system" is purely text based, if you want to do something with the system, you do it on the command line, there's no GUI based procedure in the FreeBSD handbook. From what i've used, there's no GUI configuration tool specific to FreeBSD. I would even guess there's *nothing* FreeBSD specific which is a GUI. Compare this to RedHat or Ubuntu where every bit of graphic is themed and you have
Mainly because the "base system" is purely text based, if you want to do something with the system, you do it on the command line, there's no GUI based procedure in the FreeBSD handbook.
Strange, I was under the impression that Debian's base install has no GUI either. As a matter of fact, I have a Debian Postgresql server that has never seen anything related to X.
The Debian installer gives you a choice of optional stuff at the end of the installation, like LAMP server, desktop environment, etc. I believe the FreeBSD installer does the same thing.
I dunno, it seems to me that FreeBSD suits the desktop role really well
It does (I use it too) BUT only in specific environments. FreeBSD hardware support is not bad, but it is nowhere near as complete as that found in the various Linux distro's. My wireless keyboard + mouse is supported under any recent Linux distro, on FreeBSD, only the keyboard works (fixable with a unofficial ums.ko though). No support under FreeBSD for my DVB-C PCI card either.
FreeBSD hardware support is not bad, but it is nowhere near as complete as that found in the various Linux distro's.
If it's not even as good as Linux, then it must be bad. That's one of Linux's major faults, and probably the most cited reason for not using Linux. If you don't have good hardware support, you are missing out on a lot of users. Because most people aren't willing to buy a specific machine, with just the right hardware just to use your OS. I'm an avid Linux user, but even I admit that their
huh? Linux is the OS with the best hardware support you can get.
I have never installed Windows without having to get 90% of the drivers from cds or the web. With Linux otoh the hardware support became that good that youll have less trouble just buying something and see if it works than figure out what works beforehand. And whats even better: no installing drivers necessary. they all are already there.
Please name a couple of devices that dont already work in linux. I can think of only one: bisoncam. and dr
It may come with a larger number of drivers included with the operating system, but that doesn't mean that the drivers work. I had a Voodoo 3500 TV card. It worked under the 2.4 kernel, but not under the 2.6 kernel, because whoever was maintain the drivers disappeared. Most video card drives are way worse quality then what you get on Windows. Sure the drivers exist, but they are buggy, or quite slow compared to their windows counterparts.
I am so fed up of reading this. Yes, Linux has more drivers installed "out of the box" than windows. Big deal. Every single piece of hardware I have ever bought came with a CD that had drivers for windows. Yes, it's a bit of pain having to install them all manually after reinstalling the OS, but you only have to do it once. It's far more of a pain to find that you shiny new toy has no working drivers for Linux.
I use Linux as my desktop OS, but I am no prepared to ignore it's shortcomings. From where I'm s
I defy you to find anything on PC world's shelves that is not Windows XP compatible
Any CPU more recent than the Pentium Pro. Of course Windows XP 64 bit and Server 2003 fixed this and implement the extension to allow memory access beyond 2GB.
PAE has been in windows since at least NT4, maybe earlier. On the XP desktop (x86 version), MS made a support choice to not support PAE, due to (their claim) driver issues. If you'll remember, early versions of XP supported PAE on the desktop, but then was shut off around XP SP2. MS claim is that a large percentage of drivers for consumer hardware were not built to handle both PAE and non-PAE environments, and so caused system crashes. Therefore, as a tradeoff between scalability and reliability, they cho
Drivers - I have a nice modern PC, but my scanner is no longer supported under Windows by the manufacturer. The drivers for XP do not work in Vista (I actually had trouble with it since XP SP1) and HP will not be releasing new drivers for Vista. Under Suse 10.3 and Ubuntu 7.04 it works fine. Why? because some other linux hackers have the same sort of scanner and reverse engineered the driver. it will probably keep on being supported and working until the SCSI interface no longer exists.
I call that better d
How old is it? Because I also said seven years old or less. and SP1 was 2002, if memory serves, so it's at least seven years old if it's pre SP1.
Having said that, I do take your point. One massive benefit of open source is better support for older hardware. But that's not what I was arguing about. I explicitly excluded older hardware from my argument. What I was pointing
How did you wind up with all this hardware that doesn't work with your OS? It should be a straightforward matter to only buy things that are supported. Granted, you can't expect that sort of thing from windows users and maybe that is why Linux/* isn't for the general populace. But, If you had bought compatible stuff, it rewards the manufacturers that support linux.
The webcam was given to me, the modem came from the ISP (I use my own router any way), and I don't really care that the phone isn't supported. The only thing I need to hook it up for is installing apps, and I only do that very occasionally, so rebooting is no great hardship. I selected the phone on other grounds. Which, really, is my point. Every phones software works with windows. "Is it compatible with my OS is not an issue for windows users. Despite all the strides made in the last few years, it still is
I'm running a Logitech USB headset on Fedora Core 6 without problems. One problem that could crop up is if alsa is looking for sound from other hardware and has effectively muted the headset. You'll just need to play with your distros mixer program just like the MS windows people have to.
No this is a brand new model, that upon research - I need to download an updated driver, compile and install it. While this is doable, I would have preferred it work out of the box - or I could just do a binary update and get it working.
If it's not even as good as Linux, then it must be bad. That's one of Linux's major faults, and probably the most cited reason for not using Linux.
I don't actually blame Linux for lack of said hardware support, personally. I blame hardware manufacturers for making closed hardware that is barely functional outside Windows.
There's a reason why USB in particular is barely supported by anyone outside Windows; it's because, contrary to the name, in software terms it ain't universal.
I wont argue with you that for desktop purposes, Linux does better job out of the box, but I do own a piece of hardware, the Areca ARC-1210 SATA controller, that was supported from day one in FreeBSD out of the box, and not in the two or three Linux distros I tried. Linux support existed, but you had to download the driver separately, or in one case enable the module during the install (and being a FreeBSD person, I had no idea how to do that). I bought the card for FreeBSD support, so the flaky linux suppo
You don't use the latest and greatest consumer hardware on FBSD. That's why my primary computers are all Mac's. But I am typing this from an old Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop with FBSD 6.2 installed and it works like a charm on a 2.2Ghz Celeron and 256MB of Ram. I've found FBSD to run very snappy on older hardware. Makes for cheap development machines when I'm developing specific web applications. I dev
The Linux people all want to know what distro I'm running KDE on. Half think it's Kubuntu. When I tell th
With a debian "package", I know exactly how to install it (the same way as all the others), and I know that there is a set version of that package that corresponds to, say, "Debian Sarge". I know that if I install it, it will pull along any libraries it needs, and that it won't break anything already on my system. I know it doesn't always work like that, but that's the idea. I think of a "package" as part of the distribution. Somebody has decided that it forms part of the distribution, and has hopefully tested it as such.
A "program" is what Windows has so many of. But all bets are off when it comes to versioning, library dependencies, etc. Even how to install it. If you think of Windows as a "distribution", then it doesn't come with all that many packages at all. A Desktop environment, a browser, some photo and media tools. Mac OS X doesn't really fare all that much better. I love OS X to bits, but the first thing I did was install a third party program (firefox).
A package is a bundle of stuff that can be installed using your OS' package management facility. BSD's Ports, Gentoo's portage, Debian's apt (also used by Ubuntu). The "big two" commercial OSes don't really have an equivalent to that; Windows e.g. only lets you install some optional components using a unified frontend. Counting the number of packages is easily possible and done by the repository maintainers.
A program is quite hard to define. A handwritten script could be considered a program by some, other
Whatever happened to Windows? Or does programs != packages?
Funny you should mention that. If you rule out junk software like sparkly mouse cursors, Windows seems to have less software than any other major OS (given that most Unix software is already ported to OS X, or at least can be). I feel constricted every time I have to use a Windows box because none of the programs I want to use are installed, or even readily available. No, I'm not joking.
Amen. I want a piece of software on a linux box, open the pkg mngr and click (or open a terminal and type) and its there. And when I want to update, everything does, automatically, with one command. Usually in cron. If I want to reinstall, copy home and the dir with all the dl'ed pkgs in it somewhere, nuke, copy back, update from the dir, and back to happy. It ain't religious anymore, Windows really does suckTM, I will take any *nix os. And what up with Win2k3 server? 885$?! For a damn OS? Damn, it costs tw
The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job
application form.
-- Stanley J. Randall
You don't have to be Kreskin (Score:-1, Flamebait)
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Re:You don't have to be Kreskin (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You don't have to be Kreskin (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You don't have to be Kreskin (Score:4, Interesting)
You're right that mere numbers of packages is a weird metric, but what else can we offer? FreeBSD has great performance, and has everything necessary to be either a good server *or* a good desktop. It's much like Gentoo that way -- it doesn't focus on being either one or the other, it focuses on being a solid basis. What you put on top of that basis is your choice. It honestly seems to me that the distinction between server OS and desktop OS is its own entire discussion; if we can come to a good notion of what either means, we can reach a nice conclusion. If we take the current crop of Linux desktop OSes, though, I don't see any more integration between, say, Fedora and Gnome and FreeBSD and Gnome, or Ubuntu and Gnome and FreeBSD and Gnome.
If I think about it, it does seem that Ubuntu starting with a GUI interface and letting you find the command line by yourself is more friendly to the average user; I haven't installed FreeBSD using anything other than minimal-install for so long that I don't know whether you can have a GUI start up by default. And FreeBSD's installer, whilst excellent for its audience, is less friendly to a first timer. If we take those metrics, the idea of "can I sit down and first time use it without documentation?" then a lot of the linux crop are friendlier, yeah. But the documentation *is* very hand-holdy, and very very thorough for FreeBSD. And nicely available online.
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"Don't forget, there's always PC-BSD for the Linux users - simple, point'n'click installer, etc."
This isn't really flamebait, or trolling. The current trend for Linux users (especially Ubuntu users) is exactly that, sure they have the power of the command line but most everything is done through $package_manager via the GUI. To draw slightly on my own experience, my IRC channel has around 40 people in it, so yes it is a
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I don't think the desktop/server distinction means anything anymore, and for three reasons. One, cheap commodity hardware. Two, the literal glut of software. Apache too bloated? Use lighttpd. KDE overblown? Use fluxbox. And three is (open) standards (no sniggering in the back
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Re:You don't have to be Kreskin (Score:4, Insightful)
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Whether desktop drivers are a good metric really depends on what hardware you own. Sometimes what you need just ain't there.
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Linux will run virtually everything bsd will (after a recompile)... And most linux apps will recompile for bsd, but bsd's linux emulation isn't perfect when it comes to precompiled linux apps...
There's also hardware support, does bsd have drivers for modern ati videocards yet? I know the linux drivers suck, but its slightly better than nothing.
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Mainly because the "base system" is purely text based, if you want to do something with the system, you do it on the command line, there's no GUI based procedure in the FreeBSD handbook.
From what i've used, there's no GUI configuration tool specific to FreeBSD. I would even guess there's *nothing* FreeBSD specific which is a GUI.
Compare this to RedHat or Ubuntu where every bit of graphic is themed and you have
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Strange, I was under the impression that Debian's base install has no GUI either. As a matter of fact, I have a Debian Postgresql server that has never seen anything related to X.
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Re:You don't have to be Kreskin (Score:5, Insightful)
It does (I use it too) BUT only in specific environments. FreeBSD hardware support is not bad, but it is nowhere near as complete as that found in the various Linux distro's. My wireless keyboard + mouse is supported under any recent Linux distro, on FreeBSD, only the keyboard works (fixable with a unofficial ums.ko though). No support under FreeBSD for my DVB-C PCI card either.
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If it's not even as good as Linux, then it must be bad. That's one of Linux's major faults, and probably the most cited reason for not using Linux. If you don't have good hardware support, you are missing out on a lot of users. Because most people aren't willing to buy a specific machine, with just the right hardware just to use your OS. I'm an avid Linux user, but even I admit that their
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I use Linux as my desktop OS, but I am no prepared to ignore it's shortcomings. From where I'm s
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Any CPU more recent than the Pentium Pro. Of course Windows XP 64 bit and Server 2003 fixed this and implement the extension to allow memory access beyond 2GB.
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On the XP desktop (x86 version), MS made a support choice to not support PAE, due to (their claim) driver issues. If you'll remember, early versions of XP supported PAE on the desktop, but then was shut off around XP SP2. MS claim is that a large percentage of drivers for consumer hardware were not built to handle both PAE and non-PAE environments, and so caused system crashes. Therefore, as a tradeoff between scalability and reliability, they cho
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I did explicitly say I was talking about XP.
I actually had trouble with it since XP SP1)
How old is it? Because I also said seven years old or less. and SP1 was 2002, if memory serves, so it's at least seven years old if it's pre SP1.
Having said that, I do take your point. One massive benefit of open source is better support for older hardware. But that's not what I was arguing about. I explicitly excluded older hardware from my argument. What I was pointing
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I believe you meant:
"Is it compatible with my OS?" is was not an issue for windows users. Despite all the strides made in the last few years, it still is for Linux users.
As windows will not mean Windows XP after next year but Windows Vista.
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I don't actually blame Linux for lack of said hardware support, personally. I blame hardware manufacturers for making closed hardware that is barely functional outside Windows.
There's a reason why USB in particular is barely supported by anyone outside Windows; it's because, contrary to the name, in software terms it ain't universal.
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I dev
The Linux people all want to know what distro I'm running KDE on. Half think it's Kubuntu. When I tell th
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Re:You don't have to be Kreskin (Score:4, Informative)
With a debian "package", I know exactly how to install it (the same way as all the others), and I know that there is a set version of that package that corresponds to, say, "Debian Sarge". I know that if I install it, it will pull along any libraries it needs, and that it won't break anything already on my system. I know it doesn't always work like that, but that's the idea. I think of a "package" as part of the distribution. Somebody has decided that it forms part of the distribution, and has hopefully tested it as such.
A "program" is what Windows has so many of. But all bets are off when it comes to versioning, library dependencies, etc. Even how to install it. If you think of Windows as a "distribution", then it doesn't come with all that many packages at all. A Desktop environment, a browser, some photo and media tools. Mac OS X doesn't really fare all that much better. I love OS X to bits, but the first thing I did was install a third party program (firefox).
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Whatever happened to Windows?
Vista. That's a non-operating system.
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A program is quite hard to define. A handwritten script could be considered a program by some, other
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Funny you should mention that. If you rule out junk software like sparkly mouse cursors, Windows seems to have less software than any other major OS (given that most Unix software is already ported to OS X, or at least can be). I feel constricted every time I have to use a Windows box because none of the programs I want to use are installed, or even readily available. No, I'm not joking.
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