PC-BSD 8.0 Release Focuses On Desktop Use

donadony writes "Last Monday PC-BSD 8.0 was released. PC-BSD is based on FreeBSD and uses KDE as its default desktop environment. PC-BSD is designed to make BSD much easier for desktop use. The 8.0 release includes support for 3D acceleration with NVIDIA drivers on amd64 and improvements in the USB subsystem. The PC-BSD team has also developed a friendly package manager system with a simple-to-use GUI tool (see the screenshots tour). For a full list of changes, refer to the changelog."

Re:Linux Binary Compatible

[ig88b]

Just applications.

Re:Linux Binary Compatible

[bsDaemon]

I used to use XiG Acclerated X Linux binaries on top of the linux abi on FreeBSD 3.3 back in the day, because the Voodoo3 drivers were better than the 'native' ones for XFree86 where at the time. I wouldn't try sticking network drivers or anything in, but I'm not really a kernel expert. There is an ndiswrapper-type thing for FreeBSD/PC-BSD if you need that for wifi, though.

Re:Am I the only ignorant one to think...

[CSHARP123]

Only difference is, this is not from Microsoft and it works Just out of the box. You do not need to struggle like how you do with Windows. Hope this helps.

Been testing it

[WinterSolstice]

And this is a BIG improvement over version 7. Still some bugs to be worked out, but it's got far better integration with the PBI installer (similar to synaptic), a very good GUI installer, and the very latest nvidia drivers.

Very nice, very well executed. They turned it out pretty fast too.

that link is wrong

[tresstatus]

not to point out the obvious, but when you go to the change log link from the summary, you actually wind up going to http://www.unixmen.com/content/view/151/11/ [unixmen.com] which tells you how to install nagios. here is a link to the pcbsd 8.0 changelog... http://www.pcbsd.org/content/view/151/11/ [pcbsd.org]

Re:Wait

[flydpnkrtn]

Er, well that's not quite true. It seems there's a lot of confusion in this area...

The OS X kernel is called XNU, and is Mach-based. It's not the FreeBSD kernel.

OS X's userland is called Darwin, is open source, and IS based on a FreeBSD userland (not kernel)

Just sayin'

Re:Linux Binary Compatible

[V!NCENT]

The layer is for the ABI, in other words the Application Binary Interface (it's like the API of a Kernel for applications). This is because FreeBSD is not Linux. With Linux the drivers are from within the kernel, or somewhat outside of it with modules.

However... If you want open source graphics drivers (I am sorry... I do not know your level of knowledge/expertice so just ignore what I am about to say if it makes you go like *whoooosh* ;) ) than these are tied into X.org (the graphical foundation upon which the Linux GUI's works) and the Linux KMS (kernel mode setting) (as the UMS, user mode setting, is disabled in most current drivers) and if FreeBSD already has the KMS feature (was planned) then these drivers work out of the box on FreeBSD ;).

Re:PBI files

[WinterSolstice]

I'm a huge fan of the PBIs and I think they're a really good way to quickly install objects that would otherwise require ports and complex dependencies.

The best part is they don't interfere with each other, unlike some of the apt-get/yum type packages. For the most part they encapsulate everything that would have been in the ports build.

When the PBI is updated, you get a notification and can just clicky click to upgrade it (without trashing the rest of your system just because Gimp 9.9 requires some lib that everything else hates)

Easy to make too - just get the PBI installer, and then build them from the existing port. Porting still remains an exercise for the reader ;)

Installing Firefox, Quake, America's Army, Rhythmbox or Gnome like this is awesome. I hope that it takes off as a model.

Re:Wait

[V!NCENT]

Mac OS X is based on NeXT.

What Apple does is that they recycle open source bits for their own use, and they happened to use some BSD stuff, but Mac OS X is by far not based on BSD! Let's start with the fact that Mac OS X has two kernels instead of one... So there you go...

And also, Apple does occaisionally contribute some stuff back to FreeBSD, so in some sense BSD's marketshare is also a bit of Apple's by your definition...

Re:Wait

[abigor]

XNU features a POSIX api, a process model, networking, and various other bits from FreeBSD, although of course much altered from the original. It sort of wraps Mach.

Re:Still freeze with ZFS and moderate load?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's still a problem. The freebsd-stable mailing list during January and February of this year has been affluent with discussions amongst administrators regarding how to solve the performance problems ZFS on FreeBSD creates. There are some worthwhile answers but nothing concrete. It has nothing to do with the amount of RAM you have.

Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris do not have these problems.

Re:Linux Binary Compatible

[BitZtream]

I should expand on that, really what FBSD binary emulation is ... is just syscall emulation. You still use all the Linux libraries (some slightly patched to be more efficient on FBSD under the emulated syscall interface, but essentially unchanged and unchanged versions directly from a linux box will work).

The only thing the emulation layer does is tell the runtime linker to use a different syscall interface and a different library path for Linux libs, with some minor patches to the linux libs to make things smoother.

Re:PBI files

[tepples]

And as I understand it, the idea of PBI is to simplify the case where "you try to get it from somewhere else".

Re:Been testing it

[pgmrdlm]

Well, you know dick measure r. if you would have read the COMPLETE post. you would have seen I only flame back when the person gives me crap over MY NIX flavor of choice. I don't push it on anyone.

So get both your mind and hands off my dick. Because I don't give a fuck what OS you or anyone else use's.

What, you looking at my dick because your an asshole and trying to be filled?