Using FreeBSD as Desktop OS

It's amazing how many people are using portable devices these days and considering that normal. So often we're talking apples and oranges when talking "desktop" because they fail to mention that they're not using a stationary computer - ie. what we used to call a desktop in the old days. I personally have no interest whatsoever in things like power saving, hibernating, and wireless stuff.

I leave my laptops plugged in and use them as you would have a PC. I probably haven't taken one of mine out of the apartment 2-3 times, if that. I don't care about hibernate either and leave the ones I'm using running 24/7.

WiFi? With 50 other apartments within stones throw in my building alone, several Govt. buildings all with wifi in signal range, I wouldn't think of enabling mine. I was without internet service for a year, and convinced the Administrator to enable a hotspot for us, but I wouldn't use it either.
 
The statement that FreeBSD developers use Macs has certainly become a meme. One would think that any FreeBSD developer would find it reasonably easy to set up FreeBSD. But . . . whatever.
 
We've been through this discussion several time. For a FreeBSD developer who works on something that is *not* the GUI, there is no advantage to using FreeBSD as a desktop. They should use whatever they are most productive with.

I was a developer who worked professionally on Linux projects (which ended up in the kernel) for many years. For the first ~8 years, I used Windows on my company-owned laptop; then I switched to a Mac. Both were very productive environments. I had a Linux desktop for a while too, but eventually having two computers got to be too much of a hassle, and I switched to using rack-mounted development machines in a computer room, and my laptop to log remotely into them. With both Windows and Mac, you can get X, so you can run graphical applications on a remote machine if you want to. Looking at my colleagues on those projects, it was probably an even split between Windows, Mac and Linux as a GUI.

The only time I used Linux on a laptop was for my personal home machine. I gave up on that when switching my server at home from Linux to *BSD; Linux on a laptop (in the early 2000s) was way too stressful and hard work.

Anecdote: In the early 90s, due to a bizarre coincidence, I was issued a NeXT as my desktop machine (this was before laptops were commonly available). It was a nightmare. Nothing worked right on that machine, and using non-native applications (in particular those that wanted to use X rather than the NeXT's native display-postscript based graphics) was torture. My officemate had an IBM AIX desktop machine. After a year of fighting the NeXT, I gave up, hid it in a lab, brought a VT200 emulator with Tektronix graphics from home, connected it with two 38kBaud serial lines to my office mate's AIX machine, and gave up on GUIs for work use. What is the moral of that anecdote? Being forced to use a GUI that you don't get along with really kills your productivity.
 
ralphbsz
Which "FreeBSD GUI"? There is none...
Maybe Apple's sponsorship just means "free Macs for the FreeBSD staff"? *wildly speculating*
Product placement and competitor sabotage at its best :)

OJ
It is sadly a truth. wblock@ some time ago tried to find FreeBSD devs who were actually using it, but apparently failed.
Is there a better proof that its devs consider it unfit as desktop OS? :(
FreeBSD core devs seem to like Debian Stretch:p
 
It's amazing how many people are using portable devices these days and considering that normal.

Welcome to 2018, laptop computers are the new default desktop hardware. It is indeed normal, at least since 2010, with regard to numbers sold (https://www.statista.com/statistics...forecast-for-tablets-laptops-and-desktop-pcs/). This may be different for certain niche areas like developers working with compiled languages (because https://xkcd.com/303/) or users in need of excessive graphics power. The majority uses mobile machines. Additionally, if you take a look at the tablet market share, it becomes painfully clear just how completely traditional desktop environments have failed to offer a compelling experience to anyone not specifically looking for that very experience and flexibility.

A modern graphical desktop requires an operating system below that supports all this special hardware and functionality or it will never be a compelling choice for this use case. In fact, thinking deeper about it, I'd argue that FreeBSD does the right thing by focusing on its strengths in the server, embedded and appliance space to remain clean. Adding all the extra functionality and drivers needed to support a wide range of laptop hardware (especially in the kernel) could be problematic in the long run. It may not even be feasible to try to achieve both — server and desktop — since both follow vastly different models of operation.
 
We've been through this discussion several time. For a FreeBSD developer who works on something that is *not* the GUI, there is no advantage to using FreeBSD as a desktop. They should use whatever they are most productive with.

Thank you for your in-depth explanation of your experience. Nevertheless, it sounds like there is no particular advantage to any one system other than personal familiarity - particularly if one is using "non GUI" workspace. By which I presume you mean a terminal.

I'm a rank amateur and have little trouble setting up FreeBSD with KDE and just counted (usually don't give it any thought) 16 open terminals. There are of course many other programs of my usual favorites open in various places. How this could possibly be anything but a productive environment or improved upon, other than using whatever personal arrangement a person might want, is beyond me. Nothing in ;your post suggests anything else. It seems to me that a developer using a Mac for work is really a personal statement of some kind - which is certainly fair enough. I can't argue with that. It just seems odd to me.
 
I'd argue that FreeBSD does the right thing by focusing on its strengths in the server
I certainly would too. Even as a desktop user, I've very happy with the solidity of the underlying system - not to mention it's easy and logic of configuration. To my way of thinking, that is actually the most important part of a desktop system.
 
It seems to me that a developer using a Mac for work is really a personal statement of some kind - which is certainly fair enough. I can't argue with that. It just seems odd to me.
Using Macs is often a statement, like driving Porsche instead of Volkswagen.
 
... solidity of the underlying system - not to mention it's easy and logic of configuration. To my way of thinking, that is actually the most important part of a desktop system.
In terms of solidity as desktop, systemDOS is probably even abit better than FreeBSD.
However, in terms of ease of use and logic of configuration, MacOs seems to be the best straight jacket.

People do not need to learn much. It is standardized, it just works, else things wont get approved by the big corporation.
Many people just like standardized fast food without surprises, bad ones as well as good ones.
And no need to cook, no need for dishwashing, no need for individuality.
Just like a burger...
 
It may not even be feasible to try to achieve both — server and desktop — since both follow vastly different models of operation.

Not to beat a dead equine, but the screenshot thread alone gives testiment to how many of us have managed to do just that.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact it's generally considered as a server and it comes with the base system and a terminal only. I wouldn't want it any other way. When I switched to cable my plan only came with a pass through modem and I ran my FreeBSD machines facing the internet for months without a second thought. The only reason I finally got a router was so I could have more than one online at once.

I also realize this isn't Windows, thankfully, and even with emulators/wine maybe not all of the apps some people need as a necessity might not run on FreeBSD. It can't be all things to all people, doesn't try to be and they have a genuine need to run something else. I don't.

Why developers use Apple is beyond me, but it's bad form at the very least IMO. Buy a sticker from FreeBSD Mart to cover up the logo at least and have some pride. I would be ticked off to see it and probably advise them I knew of a tutorial if they couldn't set it up themselves.

Or want to in a bad way. :) Depending.
 
Nevertheless, it sounds like there is no particular advantage to any one system other than personal familiarity - particularly if one is using "non GUI" workspace. By which I presume you mean a terminal.
No. Some GUIs don't work, or don't work well. Or they take a lot of work to maintain and configure, which is time wasted from getting work done. It may be personal preference too. But the terminal emulation is typically not the driving factor.

For me, the vast majority of actual "development" work is done at a command line, with an editor (I like emacs, but don't disparage vi), using command-line tools, such as diff, git, make, and debuggers. Some of my colleagues prefer graphical editors (which range from the Xwindows version of emacs to editors they have written themselves). I know lots of people use IDEs such as eclipse, which require a GUI too.

But much (or maybe most) of the work of a developer is not actually looking at code and typing it. A lot of it is reading and writing e-mails, chatting via IM with colleagues that are spread all over the globe, reading and editing documents (design documents, requirements documents, end-user manuals, ...) which are typically written in Word or similar word processors, reading and updating project-internal wikis, and finding the right information for the job on the web. In addition, many development tasks are actually data- or performance driven, and require graphical analysis tools (which can be as simple as Excel making a graph, and can be complex graphical beasts). For a while, I spent more time making diagrams in Visio and Rational Rose than actually writing code. So developers are mostly just normal computer users, who spend a lot of their time complaining about the e-mail program their employer forces on them (there are no good ones, just varying shapes of brokenness), fighting with bugs in either MS Office or OpenOffice, and so on. Clearly, the shell window is the an important one (and I often have a dozen or two dozen shell windows open), but everything else matters too.

And this is where the quality of a GUI comes in. If a developer is continuously being interrupted because he can't get MS Outlook or Excel to work correctly, or because his desktop OS needs to reboot three times a day (either because the web browser leaked all available memory, or the Windows antivirus needed to be updated), he isn't going to get work done. A lot of it is factual: If you have ever tried to use OpenOffice in a MS-Office shop, you understand that there are significant differences and incompatibilities. At a previous employer, we had to all give up Windows, because the ClearCase source control system worked very badly on it (those were NOT fun days, not only did our machines crash all the time, we kept losing our source code modifications several times a day). A lot of it is just preference: Given my hands and my life experience (I've spent a lot of hours playing piano), I'm very keyboard-driven, and need keyboard shortcuts for everything to survive at full speed; I have colleagues who type very slowly, and mostly use the mouse. To each his own, but such preferences can heavily influence with hardware, which OS, and which GUI (KDE vs. Gnome vs. ...) to use. And in the end, it is also a question of taste. For example, we used to use IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad machines in our office, and some people loved the little red mini-joystick in the keyboard, and couldn't survive without it; others hated it and used only the track pad; while another group always carried a mouse along.

To Snurg's comment: The cost of a Mac is insignificant to a professional software developer. To begin with, here in Silicon Valley you can assume that the average developer costs his employer at least $200K-$300K a year (no, that is NOT the salary they get, a lot of that goes into office space, overhead, insurance, taxes+retirement); so a new MacBook Pro for $2K is peanuts. Plus, professional-grade laptops from other high-quality manufacturers aren't much cheaper than Macs, if any. A Mac is no longer a status symbol, since everyone has it, or has something just as good.

Anecdote: This message is being typed on my home MacBook Pro. I bought it used in 2009, for about half of retail price (it was a lease return, 2008 model). It it still alive, an indestructible machine. I spend very little money on my personally owned computers. I dread the day it will finally die (it is already on its 4th battery, 2nd touchpad, 2nd or 3rd optical drive, and at least 3rd hard disk, now a $80 SSD): While the nearest Apple store is only 20 minutes away, I really don't want to go in there and give them several K$.
 
I had to build a custom kernel without the VESA driver to make S3 suspend/resume work on my HP Z800 computers.
Just have a look at your old thread. Work on this area is need of the hour. Some one may throw some light regarding porting of linux "pm-utils" or "firejail" etc.

@ralphbsz it is some how true that dev's also need to eat & platform to fame.
They very much require user's requirement and feedback (bug) for their own development. I think big houses don't have that scope.
I am still searching the difference between 'free' work of professionals, tech mad ( having fun out of solving problem without any return) & 'spiritual gurus'.
 
No. Some GUIs don't work, or don't work well. Or they take a lot of work to maintain and configure, which is time wasted from getting work done. It may be personal preference too. But the terminal emulation is typically not the driving factor.
If "some" GUI doesn't work then don't use it. There are lots to chose from that run very well on FreeBSD.
For me, the vast majority of actual "development" work is done at a command line, with an editor
Exactly, so as you said above, we're good with the terminal emulators.
But much (or maybe most) of the work of a developer is not actually looking at code and typing it. A lot of it is reading and writing e-mails, chatting via IM with colleagues that are spread all over the globe, reading and editing documents (design documents, requirements documents, end-user manuals, ...) which are typically written in Word or similar word processors, reading and updating project-internal wikis, and finding the right information for the job on the web.
Firefox 58 is very fast and totally solid now so any browser based interaction (and that's a lot of it these days) is taken care of. Libre Office works very well, so unless you're a Microsoft shill there is no excuse for not using it - other than you just don't want to, which of course is legitimate. :)
And this is where the quality of a GUI comes in. If a developer is continuously being interrupted because he can't get MS Outlook or Excel to work correctly, or because his desktop OS needs to reboot three times a day
Is that a bad strawman argument, or have you really not kept up in the last decade? I don't reboot my FreeBSD desktop system and there is no difficulty with the quality of my GUI. I'm sorry sir, but despite you sounding even tempered and nice, it really looks like you are trolling. At the very least, you are certainly being insulting. Why is that?
 
@OJ: What kind of job do you work?
I'm an old age pensioner. I haven't worked for many years. Otherwise have professional expertise in arts and flute playing in particular. I use FreeBSD for my desktop because of its stability and lack of surprises. It is a good OS for an old fart like me who is tired of constant changes and just want things to stay working once installed. I'm a total IT amateur, although I can type and feel most comfortable in a terminal because it feels like DOS.
 
If a developer is continuously being interrupted because he can't get MS Outlook or Excel to work correctly.
This one used to actually be a big issue for me and unfortunately LibreOffice (or OpenOffice at the time) did not quite solve it. It isn't the fact that I wanted to run Microsoft Office, it is more the fact that everyone else in the office had an obsessive need to use it. I could not guarantee that my LibreOffice documents would display with the correct format when opened up by someone else in Microsoft Office.

Luckily in modern times, things have changed and Office is actually not at all an issue for me anymore:

1) Office 360 "Cloud" is a hilarious idea for actual work but it means that I can test my LibreOffice documents without fsck(8)ing around with Windows or MS Office. People are also more happy to blame the "cloud" when formatting is off, so I am quietly happy for them to do so ;)

2) LibreOffice and newer MS Office are much more compatible nowadays.

3) Many of my colleagues that I work closely with have finally given up with Office and gone to LaTeX. This was the perfect outcome.

So just like Adobe Flash... Microsoft Office was just a waiting game ;)
 
I look at all the progress that Linux has made to become more mainstream and it is sad that BSD is not able to do the same. However, that rarity make would make our systems unique and essentially more secure.
 
I look at all the progress that Linux has made to become more mainstream and it is sad that BSD is not able to do the same. However, that rarity make would make our systems unique and essentially more secure.

I think it is more that FreeBSD knows its current place in this world. I mean, Linux has put in a lot of effort to become mainstream and that has not only alienated some of it's long time supporters but it is now in fact *less* popular with mainstream users than it was ~2 years ago (or at least suggested by the Steam user survey). Though I personally blame Gnome 3 for that rather than Linux or systemd.

I think if Linux ever does become a big player in mainstream computing, then perhaps FreeBSD will "give it a shot". Until then, it simply isn't worth it.
 
All in all, it is possible to use FreeBSD as a Desktop. But you need to do a fair bit of work. This of course can be daunting to newbies to the platform and not everything is as straight forward as it seems in videos or articles. My experience this past weekend has certainly shown me that. While my choice of MacOS for the moment is certainly mainstream, I will say that FreeBSD is my choice of a Desktop operating system as compared to any Linux variant.
 
All in all, it is possible to use FreeBSD as a Desktop. But you need to do a fair bit of work. This of course can be daunting to newbies to the platform and not everything is as straight forward as it seems in videos or articles.

I've tried my best to make it as simple and concise as possible for someone who has never used UNIX or the commandline to set up a fully functional FreeBSD desktop using ports. Had something similar been available to me in 1998 I would have started using it then.

Yes, there is a lot of work to it especially if you use ports, which I always do, But when I'm done I know I've got a rock solid customized desktop like no other, except the one sitting beside it. I don't get that thrill or sense of accomplishment like the first time I successfully set up a FreeBSD desktop. Now I just expect it to happen and it does every time.

When I last installed pre-rolled Debian from a Live CD I thought. "now what?" Look and see what programs they've decided I need, etc. It is boring and nothing I actually did myself.
 
I've tried my best to make it as simple and concise as possible for someone who has never used UNIX or the commandline to set up a fully functional FreeBSD desktop using ports. Had something similar been available to me in 1998 I would have started using it then.

Yes, there is a lot of work to it especially if you use ports, which I always do, But when I'm done I know I've got a rock solid customized desktop like no other, except the one sitting beside it. I don't get that thrill or sense of accomplishment like the first time I successfully set up a FreeBSD desktop. Now I just expect it to happen and it does every time.

When I last installed pre-rolled Debian from a Live CD I thought. "now what?" Look and see what programs they've decided I need, etc. It is boring and nothing I actually did myself.

Using the ports takes a long time as well. I guess that is why people like to use the "pkg install" system. I used the pkg method. Maybe that is why I ran into issues. That and the fact that I was not sure on which GUI to install.
 
I look at all the progress that Linux has made to become more mainstream and it is sad that BSD is not able to do the same.
FreeBSD has no interest in becoming "mainstream". FreeBSD is a professional operating system for professionals. Linux main goal is to replace Windows on the desktop. I'm glad FreeBSD's goal is to target our professional operations.

Using the ports takes a long time as well. I guess that is why people like to use the "pkg install" system. I used the pkg method. Maybe that is why I ran into issues.
I haven't been following this thread but I don't understand the issue. Pretty much everything I've ever installed works out of the box so...
I was not sure on which GUI to install.
I don't understand this either. Install what you want but, again, I haven't bothered to look through this thread.
 
Yes, I've caught plenty of heat for using ports when there is no actual need as pkg is faster. But that's how I learned and what I think best.

It may well be a little more overwhelming for new people than I anticipated and apparently not everyone is sure why they're doing this or that, but it gives valuable commandline experience and in compliing programs. Both of which are good things IMO.

And the option to use pkg is always open anyway.

That and the fact that I was not sure on which GUI to install.

x11/xorg is your GUI. If you mean Desktop Environment or Window Manager, it's your choice. There are threads detailing why each person prefers the one they use. I had a low end machine to start out with, had to choose something easy on resources, went with x11-wm/fluxbox and stuck with it.
 
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