Those of you who have used GhostBSD please share your experience

john_rambo

john_rambo

As you know GhostBSD offers a Live mode for testing, a really easy to use installer & a collection of apps installed by default which makes it really easy for FreeBSD newbies to try FreeBSD.

I have a GhostBSD install and personally I am quite satisfied. The only thing that I don't like is the fact that GhostBSD uses its own repo which as far as I know is synced with the FreeBSD repos. I wonder why this descicion was made because it adds a little delay depending on when the GhostBSD repos are synced with the FreeBSD repos.

So those of you who have used GhostBSD please share your experience.
 
Please note that discussion of GhostBSD isn't really permitted here. Not banned, precisely, but discouraged. The reason is that this a FreeBSD forum.

forums.freebsd.org

GhostBSD, pfSense, TrueNAS, and all other FreeBSD Derivatives

Questions about 'derivative FreeBSDs', like GhostBSD DesktopBSD TrueNAS XigmaNAS OPNsense pfSense PacBSD BSD Router Project NomadBSD helloSystem should be asked on the forums and/or mailing lists for these specific products. See below for links. If you still think your questions should be...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

It's often a case-by-case basis, so use your own judgement, but I suspect (though I'm not a moderator here), that a post like yours isn't really appropriate for these forums. It might be better asked on daemonforums.org which, though primarily OpenBSD-centric, does allow all BSD questions.
 
scottro
I thought I can discuss this here coz I am not asking for any kind of support. If a mod locks this topic I will understand. Thanks.
 
I'm sure we have some users that have used GhostBSD, but the bulk is of course FreeBSD. So you may not get very much response on the subject here either.
 
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Let me say I used it in the past.

What I dislike is all these derivatives are often one man, or a very small group, vision!

Derivatives never fit my vision hence I prefer use the "vanilla" version of everything since is a community effort and tend to be more generic and better modular.
 
tgl eternal_noob
GhostBSD could have very very close to vanilla FreeBSD. That's not the case because of only one reason and that is the decision of maintaining separate repos. Other stuff like ipfw enabled by default is no major disadvantage. If a user wishes to to use PF its just needs a simple editing of /etc/rc.conf and creating /etc/pf.conf. Which is what I have done.
 
GhostBSD has been shaped to welcoming Linux users providing tools and defaults that Linux users expect to find in a *nix OS, I fell in the same category unfortunately... 🤦‍♂️
 
It is available also for FreeBSD and it is called networkmgr, I don't use it because it requires sudo as dependencies, I don't see the reason for that, furthermore I use doas, hence to make the wifi working I use wifimgr, this is lesser polite but it works.
 
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freebsdinator said:
Skimming through their screenshots, it seems they have a wifi-manager built in. Is there an equivalent FreeBSD port that I can grab?
Click to expand...
There is one big problem with this particular network manager. If you are using WiFi this network manager lets you choose a SSID but if you are using ethernet you cant do anything. I mean you cant set DNS or static IP.

Note : I am comparing GhostBSD's network manager with Linux's network manager.
 
Beastie7 said:
GhostBSD is literally FreeBSD. It works as well as FreeBSD. Why do these threads exist..
Click to expand...
GhostBSD uses its own repos which gets synced with FreeBSD. Suppose you are using vanilla FreeBSD and you get an update for Firefox today it will take some time to get that update under GhostBSD. Exactly how many days ? That I don't know.
 
john_rambo said:
… an update for Firefox today it will take some time to get that update under GhostBSD. …
Click to expand...
1643960804050.png


Magic!


Hint: it's not magic, but do, please, proceed with caution; this is probably frowned upon.

Precaution: create, activate then boot a new boot environment.

Then create /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf with this content:

Code: 
FreeBSD {
    url = "pkg+http://pkg.FreeBSD.org/${ABI}/latest";
    mirror_type = "srv";
    signature_type = "fingerprints";
    fingerprints = "/usr/share/keys/pkg";
    enabled = true;
    priority = 3;
}

I chose 3. YMMV.

Generally:
  • make sane use of boot environments before any installation or upgrade that will draw from the FreeBSD repository
  • if you do encounter difficulty, don't forget that you have a non-standard combination of repos
  • I should not expect help for this combination in GhostBSD Forums.
 
grahamperrin
Q1) Is it possible to add the FreeBSD repo that you have mentioned in such a way that only Firefox is pulled from that repo ? All other packages are pulled from GhostBSD repos ?

Q2) Can I manually download the Firefox package from the FreeBSD repos and install it under GhostBSD ? Just like downloading a .deb file for Debian/Ubuntu ? If yes, whats the command ? Can this too cause breakage ?

When I visit https://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:13:amd64/latest/All/

I see this

repo.png
 
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