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.
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 a bunch of custom graphic utilities.
When you install XFCE on FreeBSD, you get XFCE. When you install XFCE on Ubuntu, you get Xubuntu.
Don't get me wrong, I don't say it's not suited to Desktop, just that the Desktop experience is not part of the OS, it's in the ports....and that's why i've been using it since 4.x
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.
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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 a bunch of custom graphic utilities.
When you install XFCE on FreeBSD, you get XFCE.
When you install XFCE on Ubuntu, you get Xubuntu.
Don't get me wrong, I don't say it's not suited to Desktop, just that the Desktop experience is not part of the OS, it's in the ports....and that's why i've been using it since 4.x
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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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