Linuxo Forumi

DesktopBSD (Austria) is one man show. He has graduate from university and has a real job now. DesktopBSD is now probably dead. The fundamental disagreement between him and PC-BSD was on the issue of the packaging system. PC-BSD put all the cards behind PBI which was ill conceived solution for volunteering (more or less) project from the very beginning. The number of PBI-s is a testimony to my statement. DesktopBSD decided to stick more to core FreeBSD and just create the
front end for binary packages and also compile them more rapidly since they are usually behind ports. I think that was a right approach.There is a slew of small desktop centric project which lived for a year or two just to die. FreeSBIE (Italian), ReFreeSBIE (Romanian FreeSBIE), TrueBSD (Belorusia), MidnightBSD, Damn Small BSD and so on and so forth.

Most of the projects were run buy couple of guys from their garage as long as
things looked easy and then just disappear into thin air.

Collectively they created couple good tools but that was about it.

The following is the short list of things I personally consider important to be able to compete on the desktop market for the average Joe.

1. LiveCD with the installer (accomplished partially with FreeSBIE which didn't
have HDD installer, also RoFreeSBIE and TrueBSD)
2. High compression algorithm for LiveCD edition which will compress lots of
software 2GB on single 700mb CD like PCLOS (never accomplished)
3. Ability to resize NTFS or Ext2 to enable the space on the HDD for new
operating system (never accomplished). GParted can not be even ported to
FreeBSD since it is Linux specific.
4. FreeBSD even had a problems in the past to boot from extended partition (behind first 8GB).
5. Tool for automatic creation custom LiveCD like mklivecd of PCLOS (partially
possible with FreeSBIE tools)
6. LiveUSB version. (Never accomplished)
7. Windows tools for creating LiveCD and LiveUSB (UNetBoot partially accomplished)
8. Ability to run from NTFS like Wubu (never accomplished).
9. Solid front end for the binary packaging system (never accomplished).
10. Easy way to update binary packages.(Never accomplished)
11. Easy way to binary update base of the system (not possible)
12. Good HDD installer (PCBSD completely accomplished that).
13. Good GUI configuration tools (PCLOS comes to mind) never accomplished.
14. Easy way to configure network including wireless (never accomplished)
15. Good auto detection of the hardware like Knoppix (never accomplished)
16. Slick desktop (FreeSBIE based on Xfce was the coolest)
17. Lack of Gnome version
18. Lack of good auto detection tools for printers (goes under poor hardware
recognition)
19. Inability of developers even to list scanners supported by sane-backends
in usb driver headers which is necessary for them to work.
20. Completely worthless USB stock on FreeBSD which is currently been rewritten from scratch for 8.0.
21. No video camera drivers nor any work on it.
22. No native version of Flash.
23. No native version of Adobe Reader.
24. No native version of Skype.
25. Poor support for latest gadgets(Blue Tooth) .
26. HAL (hardware abstract layer which actually works)
27. Lack of virtualization software like WMWare or SUN's VirtualBox.
28. Poor support for Wine (due to the fact that Wine is coded by Linux people)
29. Almost no support for all-in-one devices (HPLIP) is not fully functional on any BSD due to the fact that it is written for Linux.
30. Lack of proprietary drivers like the one for Epson scanners (Epkowa) or
Brother printers and scanners
31. Inability to run proprietary software like Mathematica, Maple, or MatLab since they are written for Linux.
32. Lack of proprietary drivers for video cards.
33. Lack of ALSA emulator (yes OSS is better so what)
34. Inability to easily mount NTFS, and Ext2 or Ext3 partition from PCBSD running inside Windows.
The list just goes on and on and it painful even to write these things.
In order for anything seriously to change one of big well off corporations
like Apple for instance would have fully to stand behind desktop version of
FreeBSD and to pay tens if not hundreds of developers to work full time on
FreeBSD. I honestly do not see that happening even in much better economic
conditions let alone in the middle of something which looks like a great depression.

Tom logikom neko bi mogao reći "zašto bih koristio linux, kad sve što mogu tamo, mogu i na windowsu, pa i više od toga, još lakše".
Kakve veze ima, treba sve probati, pa koristiti šta ti najviše odgovara. BSD, da imaju više pameti, mogao bi postati neuporedivo bolji i kvalitetniji OS od linuxa, ali oni tvrdoglavo žele da ostanu svet za sebe, uporno odbijajući da se vode tržišnim logikama, i onim za čim obični korisnici vape. Zato i jesu tu gde jesu, a to je - skoro nigde, nažalost.

Ja sam probao skoro FreeBSD 7.1 i stvarno ne znam zasto bi neko koristio BSD pored linux-a,sve sto ima freebsd ima i linux,pa i vise.Nisam primetio nista vise stabilnosti ili bilo cega vise nego sto imam na Arch linux-u.