Closed TrueOS plans on getting serious

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I guess that is also related with some NO TrueOS received about FreeBSD switching to OpenRC; however, apparently the door is open to launchd.

You can look about this specific subject on freebsd-hackers maillist.
 
OpenRC as an option is fine but I don't need it. I don't like FreeBSD fragmentation(Ghost,Dragon ect..)
So hopefully this brings some developers back to FreeBSD desktop scene.

The funny thing is I have notice that all the minimalist tools I use including Devuan and Alpine all offer an excellent Xfce4 implementation. It seems to be the goto desktop and I am glad FreeBSD has developers behind it.

I think FreeBSD needs more representation in the FreeDesktop.Organisation. They seem to do good things that benefit us.
Systemd is making things tough on that side of the fence, I think with Devuan and Alpine shunning politics we have allies at FreeDesktop.org. We need to have our voice heard and not let RedHat jack the whole desktop with their infection.
 
TrueOS will become a downstream fork that will build on FreeBSD by integrating new software technologies like OpenRC and LibreSSL.
Will? Aren't they already a downstream semi-fork with OpenRC and LibreSSL? I don't get it.
 
however, apparently the door is open to launchd.

launchd was in alpha with NeXTBSD project, but development was eventually disbanded due to supposed lack of interest from community and other developers, as well as the difficulty to deal with all the Mach-ism launchd carries. NetBSD has abandoned launchd too AFAIK

One deamon-tools-like supervisor/init I'd like to see in action on FreeBSD is nosh, but after the draining experience of getting skarnet's s6 workig on Linux, I'm not going to attempt a similar experience on FreeBSD since this would imply studying a lot of documentation again.
 
launchd was in alpha with NeXTBSD project, but development was eventually disbanded due to supposed lack of interest from community and other developers, as well as the difficulty to deal with all the Mach-ism launchd carries. NetBSD has abandoned launchd AFAIK

One deamon-tools-like supervisor/init I'd like to see in action on FreeBSD is nosh, but after the draining experience of getting skarnet's s6 workig on Linux, I'm not going to attempt a similar experience on FreeBSD since this would imply studying a lot of documentation again.

Currently there is sysutils/runit-faster on ports, but I never tried it.
 
One deamon-tools-like supervisor/init I'd like to see in action on FreeBSD is nosh, but after the draining experience of getting skarnet's s6 workig on Linux, I'm not going to attempt a similar experience on FreeBSD since this would imply studying a lot of documentation again.

Although you could adapt your scripts accordingly, the difference with s6 is that you need a crash course on execline. It is otherwise pretty straight forward. I was using it on alpine a while back but switched to runit. If you ever get tempted to retry take a look here.
 
I would give money to a fund from FreeBSD desktop users to the FreeDesktop.Org people. I don't mind donating for things I use.
That is a good way to get your voice heard. Put your money where your mouth is.
I think quasi-standards committees are needed for these kind of OS-interoperability issues.
 
Currently there is sysutils/runit-faster on ports, but I never tried it.

I've already happily played with runit on FreeBSD since I saw a post a couple of years ago (think it was on Linuxquestions) where someone suggested using it in service jails; and this was also thevreason for me to emvrace Void Linux sone months ago; however I've never gone as far as replacing the BSD-init and RC, since I feared I would break complex system services located under /etc/rc.d (ZFS snapshots would come in handy though).
Now that I know Tobik did the job for me, I'm definitely going to pursue that path (on bhyve first), thanks!



Although you could adapt your scripts accordingly, the difference with s6 is that you need a crash course on execline

execline and skalibs is exactly why people do not use s6! (mildly joking). Anyway I did succeed getting s6 to work on Linux after days of struggling :beer:, my concern here rather regarded having to study how nosh works too before attempting to implement it on my FreeBSD, providing a quick read of its homepage is all the technical knowledge I have of it


I was using it on alpine a while back but switched to runit. If you ever get tempted to retry take a look here.

If that's your doing, then -I don't know if you realized it- but it's the second time you're actually linking me those sources (not on the same forum), and to be honest I've appreciated and made a large use of them on my first attempt :).
As a side note, if you're the owner of the repo, glad to see you here
 
another intetesting thing:as far as I know the obscure PacBSD distro would let you choose among OpenRC and RC upon installation

I think this would a good approach for vanilla FreeBSD too, since openRC brings some advantages on desktop usage.

I wonder why OpenRC is categoricaly rejected as an option; OpenRC was created by Roy Maples, a NetBSD and FreeBSD developer, and is BSD2-clause licensed,so in agreement with the plan of eliminsting GPL from base. If the problem is with security I would be happy to learn more (links appreciated).
 
I think FreeBSD needs more representation in the FreeDesktop.Organisation. They seem to do good things that benefit us.

Is it not their job to promote FreeBSD on the desktop; it is up to the developers to promote it and dog-food their own software to improve the viability of it being a desktop system. History has shown otherwise.

Will? Aren't they already a downstream semi-fork with OpenRC and LibreSSL? I don't get it.

It makes sense for you to not understand it. Because their plans are inconsistent and regressive at best. Making another base OS does nothing but promote more fragmentation. This is bad, and quite embarrassing.

I wonder why OpenRC is categoricaly rejected as an option; OpenRC was created by Roy Maples, a NetBSD and FreeBSD developer, and is BSD2-clause licensed,so in agreement with the plan of eliminsting GPL from base. If the problem is with security I would be happy to learn more (links appreciated).

Where are you getting your information from? This is incorrect.

There was an hour and half long workgroup session at the FreeBSD Developer Summit at BSDCan 2018. Over 35 people attended the session, and almost nobody rejected the idea of OpenRC inclusion in base. It's currently being investigated.

Other options were also looked at; but the developers agreed OpenRC being the appropriate replacement.
 
another intetesting thing:as far as I know the obscure PacBSD distro would let you choose among OpenRC and RC upon installation

That is basically FreeBSD with Arch Linux pacman for those who want to use FreeBSD and worship Arch Linux. There were some PacBSD users asking questions on IRC some time ago.

Where are you getting your information from? This is incorrect.

freebsd-hackers
 
High hopes in that article, however I am slightly skeptical.

Having used PC-BSD for 7 years starting out, actually longer than I've used vanilla FreeBSD, trying TrueOS last year and making a hasty return to FreeBSD, I'd like to know just one thing.

Can you now Copy to/Move to transfer files using the Lumina desktop file manager menu? Because you couldn't then. I posted shots of the menu and asked that if someone knew how to please inform me, and silence on all fronts. I use x11-fm//xfe so much I have it open at boot and a lot of my file management consists of file transfers

That's the kind of basic everyday desktop use issue, I personally as an everyday desktop user, would want fixed before any ambitions of a grand expansion come to fruition, and fuels my skepticism.

Too much focus placed on the larger picture and not enough attention to details that would make a desktop worth using. I think this started with IX Systems taking over PC-BSD.

I have enough time invested in it myself not to want to see them fail, but sometimes I wonder...
 
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I tried to use Lumina a few times without any success. Was always surprised how they managed to get it so ugly and unintuitive at the same time. Pity, would love to have something usable on FreeBSD.
 
launchd was in alpha with NeXTBSD project, but development was eventually disbanded due to supposed lack of interest from community and other developers, as well as the difficulty to deal with all the Mach-ism launchd carries. NetBSD has abandoned launchd too AFAIK

One deamon-tools-like supervisor/init I'd like to see in action on FreeBSD is nosh, but after the draining experience of getting skarnet's s6 workig on Linux, I'm not going to attempt a similar experience on FreeBSD since this would imply studying a lot of documentation again.

+1 for nosh. I didn't get far past the bring up phase though. There was a launchd er... "implementation" for FreeBSD by Marke Heily called jobd here: https://github.com/mheily/jobd

Again, I got it up, but didn't take it very far. It too died due to lack of interest.

I for one really support the TrueOS efforts to bring other libraries into production usage. iXSystems is an awesome FreeBSD sponsor. I am concerned though that there is no "GUI distro" of FreeBSD that isn't on CURRENT. I use Ghost right now in a VM and it's nice to be able to 'install and go'.
 
I for one really support the TrueOS efforts to bring other libraries into production usage. iXSystems is an awesome FreeBSD sponsor. I am concerned though that there is no "GUI distro" of FreeBSD that isn't on CURRENT. I use Ghost right now in a VM and it's nice to be able to 'install and go'.

PC-BSD was based on FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE when I started using it, if memory serves me. I have the v0.75 beta disk within reach if it doesn't. That was 2005 and how I got my start with BSD.

I took a sabbatical from the forums for 2 years to pursue my own course of study, when I returned IXSystems had taken over. That, to me, seems to have been when everything started going down hill.

I won't rant about it, but the focus seemed to have changed completely during my absence and not for the better. The whole thing soured me on it and is a matter of public record in the old forums.

In 2012 I moved to vanilla FreeBSD, which was what I was interested in all along and the best move I ever made as far as Operating Systems are concerned.
 
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PC-BSD was based on FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE when I started using it, if memory serves me. I have the v0.75 beta disk within reach if it doesn't. That was 2005 and how I got my start with BSD.

I took a sabbatical from the forums for 2 years to pursue my own course of study, when I returned IXSystems had taken over. That, to me, seems to have been when everything started going down hill.

I won't rant about it, but the focus seemed to have changed completely during my absence and not for the better. The whole thing soured me on it and is a matter of public record in the old forums.

In 2012 I moved to vanilla FreeBSD, which was what I was interested in all along and the best move I ever made as far as Operating Systems are concerned.

They have a small team and they are doing bold things. I've been using PC-BSD/TrueOS since Isotope 9. There have been stable releases and not so stable releases. But if you look at the accomplishments as a whole, the teams achievements are pretty impressive:
- zfs and boot environments with GUI tools for "average joes".
- geli disk encryption out of the box
- Run any desktop you want straight from the package manager.
- Writing their own desktop
- If I'm not mistaken it was Mr. Kip Macy at iXsystems that pulled in DRM

And the most contentious of all (IMHO), the move to a rolling release on CURRENT. I think looking at it as going down hill is to miss-interpret what they're doing. There is now a dedicated install base testing CURRENT at all times.

In terms of stability and usability specifically,the move to separate the UI is a recognition that the TrueOS team needs to focus on more consistent, reliable releases. That shows thoughtfulness and intent to improve.

As a company, iXSystems attends pretty much every single open source event and blogs about it. And not to say the least, they are also the FreeNAS sponsor. You also need to look at the team members: I believe one of the Moore brothers is a current Core Team member, and Dru Lavigne is legendary.

I'm usually the first person to start ranting about corporate capitalism in open source; but concerning iXsystems, all of us using FreeBSD should be thanking them.
 
They have a small team and they are doing bold things. I've been using PC-BSD/TrueOS since Isotope 9. There have been stable releases and not so stable releases. But if you look at the accomplishments as a whole, the teams achievements are pretty impressive:
- zfs and boot environments with GUI tools for "average joes".
- geli disk encryption out of the box
- Run any desktop you want straight from the package manager.
- Writing their own desktop
- If I'm not mistaken it was Mr. Kip Macy at iXsystems that pulled in DRM

And the most contentious of all (IMHO), the move to a rolling release on CURRENT. I think looking at it as going down hill is to miss-interpret what they're doing. There is now a dedicated install base testing CURRENT at all times.

In terms of stability and usability specifically,the move to separate the UI is a recognition that the TrueOS team needs to focus on more consistent, reliable releases. That shows thoughtfulness and intent to improve.

As a company, iXSystems attends pretty much every single open source event and blogs about it. And not to say the least, they are also the FreeNAS sponsor. You also need to look at the team members: I believe one of the Moore brothers is a current Core Team member, and Dru Lavigne is legendary.

I'm usually the first person to start ranting about corporate capitalism in open source; but concerning iXsystems, all of us using FreeBSD should be thanking them.
Is this a sponsored post?
 
They have a small team and they are doing bold things.
What? Like changing the projects identity multiple times; further confusing your user base?

- zfs and boot environments with GUI tools for "average joes".

Here's a better idea; why not make a compelling graphical backup/restore solution that actually works.

Run any desktop you want straight from the package manager.

So, to my understanding, the goal of "TrueOS" (What is now Trident?) is to provide a graphical solution onto of FreeBSD; yet you encourage the use of the command line for tasks like this? Isn't that counter-intuitive?

With a proper desktop; a user should be able to do anything graphically.

As a company, iXSystems attends pretty much every single open source event and blogs about it.

I think you guys are putting the cart before the horse here. It doesn't make much sense to market something that is terribly incomplete.

Even then, I barely see "TrueOS" marketed much on iXsystems actual website.

And the most contentious of all (IMHO), the move to a rolling release on CURRENT. I think looking at it as going down hill is to miss-interpret what they're doing. There is now a dedicated install base testing CURRENT at all times.

I don't think riding -CURRENT makes for a stable experience; why not focus on providing a stable release out of -CURRENT instead?

Here's what you can do;

1. Go back to tracking -RELEASE; back port drivers, etc. There's way too many posts on your forums with broken installation and/or broken upgrades.

2. Put more effort into improving the look of Lumina. People like shiny things.

3. Start contributing to areas where FreeBSD lacks for the desktop; i.e. Bluetooth? WiFi management? What about printing? USB 3.x support? Thunderbolt support? etc, etc. RedHat does this for Linux all the time.

4. Move the trueos-utils-qt5 package into Lumina. Release that, TrueOS, and Lumina together, as a consistent package.

5. Drop Linux support for Lumina, focus on the BSDs. Who cares about Linux. :)

IMO your biggest hurdle is convincing the greater FreeBSD community to dog-food your OS, and provide enough
incentive to switch away from existing solutions. This project started in 2006, how many FreeBSD devs gave up their macs? Personally, I see very little why I should give up my mac for "TrueOS".
 
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