Speaking of which: are there any "distros" out there ship a combination of FreeBSD and the latest Gnome desktop? I think that would be a better combination than Ubuntu's Debian+Gnome combo, personally.
Yes, the only FreeBSD 'distro'. FreeBSD is not fragmented like the 100 and 1 Linux distros Download the FBSD isos, install the gnome packages. Not new enough, build from source using ports. While it probably doesn't include the absolutely latest Gnome, the FreeBSD people tend to appreciate stability over cutting edge features, so its probably going to be a little behind the bleeding edge, for something popular like gnome though, it should match up with the latest stable release within a very short period
yeah whe you only have 101 (its much quicker type than explicitly spelling out the and) users you just don't have time to setup distros. Whats the advantage of not having any distros? that everything needs to be compiled from source (ala gentoo) or that everything is precompiled for somebody else's needs (ala debian). While i see that BSD does have many advantages (reliablity, checked code, speed), i really don't see how not-having distros is one, sure it means you don't have to choose a distro, but it also
FreeBSD doesn't have distros because FreeBSD itself is very much like a distro. It's not a requirement from the FreeBSD team--rather, FreeBSD is a complete operating environment akin to a Linux distribution.
There's nothing technically or legally preventing me from creating a new installer that uses the FreeBSD kernel and FreeBSD userland, with some modifications to the default packages installed. In fact, people [desktopbsd.net] have [pcbsd.org] done [pfsense.com] just that. PFSense even calls it a distribution of FreeBSD.
I think the main reason that more of them haven't cropped up is because they're just not all that necessary. Since FreeBSD comes with the ability to add third-party software in using a repository (extremely similar to Gentoo's Portage, as the Gentoo team based some of their design decisions on BSD ports), so there's not much to add. If you notice, the major Linux distros of times past largely differed in the software repository and default options for precompiled packages.
especially as stupid license nazis stop us sharing code *shakes fist*
Well, if it violates the license, I don't know what you want. *shrug*
It's that year again! (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, what?
BSD Desktops (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Download the FBSD isos, install the gnome packages. Not new enough, build from source using ports. While it probably doesn't include the absolutely latest Gnome, the FreeBSD people tend to appreciate stability over cutting edge features, so its probably going to be a little behind the bleeding edge, for something popular like gnome though, it should match up with the latest stable release within a very short period
Re: (Score:0, Offtopic)
Whats the advantage of not having any distros? that everything needs to be compiled from source (ala gentoo) or that everything is precompiled for somebody else's needs (ala debian). While i see that BSD does have many advantages (reliablity, checked code, speed), i really don't see how not-having distros is one, sure it means you don't have to choose a distro, but it also
Re:BSD Desktops (Score:3, Informative)
FreeBSD doesn't have distros because FreeBSD itself is very much like a distro. It's not a requirement from the FreeBSD team--rather, FreeBSD is a complete operating environment akin to a Linux distribution.
There's nothing technically or legally preventing me from creating a new installer that uses the FreeBSD kernel and FreeBSD userland, with some modifications to the default packages installed. In fact, people [desktopbsd.net] have [pcbsd.org] done [pfsense.com] just that. PFSense even calls it a distribution of FreeBSD.
I think the main reason that more of them haven't cropped up is because they're just not all that necessary. Since FreeBSD comes with the ability to add third-party software in using a repository (extremely similar to Gentoo's Portage, as the Gentoo team based some of their design decisions on BSD ports), so there's not much to add. If you notice, the major Linux distros of times past largely differed in the software repository and default options for precompiled packages.