Is there demand for a "FreeBSD Kommunity Edition"?

  • Yes, sure

    Votes: 19 18.6%
  • Likely

    Votes: 11 10.8%
  • Maybe

    Votes: 10 9.8%
  • Doubtfully

    Votes: 10 9.8%
  • No

    Votes: 43 42.2%
  • Don't know

    Votes: 9 8.8%

  • Total voters
    102
I think a "full" DE like KDE or XfCE meets a noob's demands better than x11-wm/fluxbox,
Agreed. (i3 user is talking!) If you want to introduce FreeBSD to Windows users, use KDE. It makes a difference.
so-called "social media"
[EDIT]: BTW, the "so-called " part: good characterisation!

Testimonial:
For straight 356 days, I was using FreeBSD as a full feature desktop (office, OBS, etc) -- exclusively.
By "exclusively", I mean: no dual-boot, no VM, and no Android (phone, etc.). It is possible and fun.
PS. It was a mixture of different licences, e.g. BSD, GPL, etc. Also emulators/wine, and linux.ko.

The question:
Is is the job of FreeBSD project and/or foundation to release some sort of official Desktop variant/fork,
or third-party solutions (e.g. helloSystem) are good enough. I don't know, and I don't have any answer.

My answer (just my opinion, and I want to hear harsh criticism):
First priority (time/capital) must be to improve ARM and embedded systems. FreeBSD has its place on servers.
Embedded systems is a gap, and FreeBSD can fill in the gap. I'm not quite sure about desktop/mobile targets.
 
A noob can not easily install & use FreeBSD, because s/he is confronted with terms s/he doesn't understand. But every noob has every right to get a free & open source, performant & easy to use OS + GUI. Maybe s/he is doing s/th wonderful with the help of it, where we nerds benefit? Besides that, today's modern life is nearly incomplete w/o access to a computer + GUI. Since the internet has become an integral part of so many basic aspects of our lifes (communication via e-mail, (video-) chat & messaging, so-called "social media", news, etc.) one can even argue that it (a computer usable for a noob) has become a human right... Seriously, I'm not kidding here.

See above. For you & me, yes. But for my sister? No.
That doesn't work.
In any company, the desktops are remotely managed by some team of skilled personnel: they are forced to install and configure what has to be installed and configured.
That is, because even an experienced person, even on a standardised hardware, even with something like windows, cannot be expected to get the thing properly installed on their own.

With private users and their home desktop it is different: these are not expected to properly install their computers; they are expected to get viruses, to get hacked, to get their money stolen - because that does not matter: they do only exist to like and follow influencers, and to learn what they have to buy on the internet; as that is the only thing that matters and brings profits to the government that owns the people. And when they get hacked, they can always buy a new computer.

In the original perception of the Internet we had planned for local communities where people would receive advice and support, could exchange their experiences and help each other, and also improve on the network and technology - but people have decided otherwise and have choosen facebook instead.
 
I didn't read it that way. Despite the fact that you tell newbies to use ports-mgmt/portmaster, which you must not do (and I'm shure you know why), I appreciate your efforts.

No, I honestly don't know why but I am always open to constructive criticism and brutal honesty works with me, so please do be. You won't be nearly the first to ask why I used ports or said they think I made a mistake doing so.

I won't keep you in suspense. It's because it never occurred to me not to.

It took PC-BSD to get me to the desktop. Thanks for getting me there, now turn me loose to see what makes it tick. I didn't like the .pbi Push Button Installer they used because it reminded me of a Windows .exe and made it seem too much like Windows with KDE 3 standard at that time. I have beta v. 0.73 on disk in the drawer of the desk but am sure that's what it was at the while in 2005.

The whole point was learning to use FreeBSD. I wanted to work from the terminal, compile programs and use ports. So I taught myself how and that's all I've ever used except for the rare occasion I had to mix pkg and ports to get the job done.

I love using ports-mgmt/portmaster from the terminal so I can sit back and relax and see what's going on at a glance. If it balks and throws an Error I can see what it takes done to get it started past the fail point and just start the build again.

Unless I'm missing a new one mine is the only Tutorial that teaches FreeBSD users to use ports. Is that a bad thing? Sometimes I can't tell. :p I can't teach you the experience it takes to step in like I do. My abilities are limited in that area.

Even if I think a "full" DE like KDE or XfCE meets a noob's demands better than x11-wm/fluxbox, it might be ok for those who want to learn some nerdy stuff.
I had a Gateway Solo 1450 with 1.2-GHz single core Intel Celeron processor, 512MB RAM an 20GB HDD to run it on so I had to conserve resources as well. I tried a number of different WM but x11-wm/fluxbox is what I liked best and I know what I like.

I know what I don't and that's other people deciding for me what media player, text editor, "fun" games etc. I should be using, and I get to choose my own this way. I have a couple themes for it I had on my site that aren't posted with it here so I just found another way to make it better, with your help. :)

BTW, I had to laugh about that nerdy stuff comment. I'm a 64 year old 10th Grade dropout that got my GED when I was 32 and if you saw what the Honorable drhowarddfine, Sir Dice and a select few have seen you wouldn't pick me out of a crowd of 2 people to be the nerdy guy writing this between them. And that's a good thing. 😎
 
[...] today is one,tomorrow are more and more,until the original "spirit" and methods of the mantainers of FreeBSD are buried and all become bloated. I mean this because like many users I love the simplicity of the comunity and their sources/documentation/way to make things. So,is a very good idea,but outside of official sources,the mantainers had their (closer,not bad) actitude for one reason and for me that reason make FreeBSD not follow the actual tendencies or errors like "lets make a super desktop" "change the init system" "a have a unstable system in cost of beauty and make everything easy for the new user"
Good point. I agree. So maybe it's like what vigole suggests: there's good reason to split that to an external project, or join an existing one.
Agreed. (i3 user is talking!) If you want to introduce FreeBSD to Windows users, use KDE. It makes a difference.
I do think so. Maybe with a clean up towards removing over-complicated junk, e.g. add "advanced configuration" to some config dialogs, in order to simplify & only show basic settings to the innocent non-nerd user. And disable things that fail too often, e.g. the desktop search sysutils/kf5-sysutils/kf5-baloo :(
The question:
Is is the job of FreeBSD project and/or foundation to release some sort of official Desktop variant/fork,
or third-party solutions (e.g. helloSystem) are good enough. I don't know, and I don't have any answer.

My answer (just my opinion, and I want to hear harsh criticism):
First priority (time/capital) must be to improve ARM and embedded systems. FreeBSD has its place on servers.
Embedded systems is a gap, and FreeBSD can fill in the gap. I'm not quite sure about desktop/mobile targets.
Agreed. FreeBSD should keep being a foundation, a set of building blocks that can be used to do s/th more. And that means it must not specialize too much. The fact that ARM is Tier-2 makes me sad. It really should be Tier-1. Desktop meets ARM when it comes to tablets & phones, and recently Apple moved to ARM for their desktop systems, too. So IMHO it's a matter of month that we see other vendors offer powerful ARM desktop & laptop systems. IIRC there're already server systems with ARM available. OTOH, one of the reasons that PC-BSD/TrueOS failed was that they drifted apart from the genuine FreeBSD. I'm still not shure if that's neccessary for a desktop-oriented distribution.
With private users and their home desktop it is different: these are not expected to properly install their computers; they are expected to get viruses, to get hacked, to get their money stolen - because that does not matter: they do only exist to like and follow influencers, and to learn what they have to buy on the internet; as that is the only thing that matters and brings profits to the government that owns the people. And when they get hacked, they can always buy a new computer.

In the original perception of the Internet we had planned for local communities where people would receive advice and support, could exchange their experiences and help each other, and also improve on the network and technology - but people have decided otherwise and have choosen facebook instead.
So then, isn't it good & just to offer them a safe alternative that they can use? One that comes with sane defaults respecting privacy? The open source world can not offer such, maybe some L*x distros are close, but still some tasks are too complicated for ordinary people. When I ask friends & family about these topics, they agree that they do not want to be spy'd & hacked & tracked, but they simply do not have the skills to act accordingly, except installing a firewall & anti-virus add-on. And you can't expect them to. They just want to use their computer, just like you don't want to study thermodynamics to use your fsck(8)'ing fridge!

@Trihexagonal: Concerning so-called port"master", read the poudriere howto & don't use it. No it's not a bad thing to teach users to build ports(7) themself, but that's advanced usage & not for the average non-nerd. As usual, there are exceptions ;) e.g. when it's neccessary to build the drm-*-kmod, of course it's perfectly ok to build that on the host unjailed without synth(1) or poudriere(8), since they do not have any dependencies. For those who are eager to learn & dive into how an OS & programming works, it's an invaluable experience to build kernel & world & apps, yes. But for the average user? No, I don't think so.

Good night guys, it was a pleasure.
 
So then, isn't it good & just to offer them a safe alternative that they can use?
Well, I thought so - precisely until 1996. I not only thought so, I had, at that time, an initiative running to realise such things, name it a user-group of engaged people, and I had established good relationship to university and government, i.e. science-department. Then, in 1996 the grassroots communist totalitarians appeared, those from the student's revolutionary ops, and ripped the whole project apart, with the argument that all such initiative must be turned over to them as only they can ascertain the political correctness of the Internet. (They had no idea about computers, obviousely, but they understood there was a new propaganda-medium.)
So, been there, done it, got the t-shirt - and learned to hate communists.


One that comes with sane defaults respecting privacy? The open source world can not offer such, maybe some L*x distros are close, but still some tasks are too complicated for ordinary people. When I ask friends & family about these topics, they agree that they do not want to be spy'd & hacked & tracked, but they simply do not have the skills to act accordingly, except installing a firewall & anti-virus add-on. And you can't expect them to.
Yes, in earlier times I would have agreed to this, and more than so, would have spent my brains and time to achieve it.
But now, people have chosen otherwise. They have chosen facebook and netflix instead. They have chosen a government that values power over future. They have modded the ChaosComputerClub, which once was a famous assembly of the best futurists, into a collection of leftist puppets. They value proper transgender flections over privacy, and privacy over self-responsibility. And so mote it be, have fun watching the downfall of a civilisation. Kali Yuga Surf Club!
 
@Trihexagonal: Concerning so-called port"master", read the poudriere howto & don't use it. No it's not a bad thing to teach users to build ports(7) themself, but that's advanced usage & not for the average non-nerd. As usual, there are exceptions ;) e.g. when it's neccessary to build the drm-*-kmod, of course it's perfectly ok to build that on the host unjailed without synth(1) or poudriere(8), since they do not have any dependencies. For those who are eager to learn & dive into how an OS & programming works, it's an invaluable experience to build kernel & world & apps, yes. But for the average user? No, I don't think so.
They don't come much closer to non-average nerd than I do. That's the point of me telling about my less-than-average-person-here seat time in an Official Classroom. I didn't take the GED course either, just the test.

Some 15 year old boy dying of cancer that wanted his High School Diploma before he died beat me out for top score for tests taken that year at that facility at the last minute. He never sat in a class seat either, or was there to accept his Honor as Class Valedictorian. I can't really complain, I was Salutatorian.

Now I have to embarrass myself... I've never used a jail or built a kernel and only have minimal experience with ZFS when I tried out DandyOS, Trident or whatever they were calling it that week.

In fact, I've never had to go through anything but the following to get the Master of Ports to do my bidding. Not that there's anything wrong with the Tutorial at all. But it's a lot of work I don't ever have to:


jitte@jigoku:/ $ su
root@jigoku:/ # cd /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmaster
root@jigoku:/usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmaster # make install clean
root@jigoku:/usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmaster # cd /
root@jigoku:/ # portmaster security/rkhunter


And we are up and rolling on to X, fluxbox, etc. easy as that.

I suppose the reason I don't need it is from here on down:

"Why is poudriere needed in the first place? The ports infrastructure suffers from numerous design faults that are not easy to overcome without a package building tool like poudriere. These faults include:

Building of ports as outlined in ports(7) is performed on the live system. Many build failures stem from this when an already installed port or leftover files from an old version causes conflicts with the to be built new version of the port....."

I only build on live systems sitting in front of me in my own home and that kind of build failure is the experience I have to solve but can't teach others, as previously mentioned.

As far as being told why not to use it in your link, you are making a lot of assumptions there:
VladiBG said:
I don't agree with above statement.
I'm using FreeBSD from RELEASE 6.0 and back then there was no portmaster script to help you upgrade your ports. [...]
You don't have to, because this is not a question of agreement, but right and wrong."


And here. First of all, you don't use ports-mgmt/portmaster like I do, and likely the source of your frustration with something that doesn't work for you that works like a charm for me and I love to use:

portmaster -F x11/kde5 (recursively fetch all distfiles needed to build kde5)
The result is that after more than one hour of uselessly processing the dependency graph, this self-called master still fetches nothing.


This will do the job, pull in a list of all dependencies it deems necessary for the build, then present them to you for authorization to proceed, or options should you not want to install everything it shows. I go with it unless it's something like IPV6 I've disabled or something I know to watch for to disable during the time it's presented to me.

root@jigoku:/ # portmaster x11/kde5

At the end of that process it will present the full list of dependencies to be pulled in during the build as my faithful servant who I place full trust in. If I'm satisfied with it go to it. If I don't want to install all of the programs presented in the list I can say no and it will give me the option to get picky.

Then once given the Master of the Master of Ports nod of approval it pulls in dependencies to be built as needed during the build and I sit in the recliner and listen to my W520 .mp3 player through headphones while it toils.

I'll stick with what I like to use and my Tutorial will continue to use ports once again after being told countless times why it shouldn't. When I need told what's right and wrong I'll consult my moral compass, soon as it stops spinning like a manic merry-go-round on meth...if ever.

I'll rely on Sir Dice till then, though he doesn't think I should use ports either I trust his judgement.
 
Mjölnir, this not the first time you play as advocate of poor desktop users and speak on their name.
Why?! Is it a sense of FreeBSD proselitism, in which everyone should use FreeBSD, although FreeBSD is not
adecuate for him?

If there is a mass of people disturbing you saying they do not know what to do with FreeBSD, you can
just tell them that they should keep the fingers away of what they do not understand. And perhaps
reccomend them Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc.

Is it because you want to attract new users and hence developers? People that do not understand FreeBSD
and are not happy with it as it is will spoil it.

Why this eternal discussion on desktop? Is it because you always are at the graphical surface and otherwise
do nothing with computer? Never do a small program? Because you need all this heavy graphical machinery
to get something from the computer? Then FreeBSD is not for you, I recommend you Windows, MacOS or Linux.

Why?! Why?!

And on the original question: "Is there demand for a 'FreeBSD Kommunity Edition". I am an not someone
doing statistics to answer it. I can only speak on my person and not on the name of others (like
"desktop users"). I can only say that I have not that demand, and if FreeBSD gets spoiled with
graphical nonsense, if it becomes something like the zig linux distributions, I will have to search for
an alternative.
 
@hruodr: (please don't take it as personal attacks -- seriously, it is not.)

To defend Mjölnir here, and I know it's none of my business:
Apple, Linux and OpenBSD users worship their software. Jobs and RMS (the dude, not the quadratic one) were gods, Theo is the demigod,
and everybody outside of their circle are stupid. But, when it comes to FreeBSD -- all of a sudden, we are fair and balance. Right tool for the job!

Here's my mantra, and I hate mantra:
Specifications is irrelevant. Competitive attitude, and cult behaviour are the key. The latter sounds ugly; it is ugly, but that's your winning heuristic.
 
Specifications is irrelevant. Competitive attitude, and cult behaviour are the key.
I think, specifications is not irrelevant. OpenBSD is not competing as a Desktop OS, it is
perhaps the last OS for "desktop users", although, in opposite to FreeBSD, X11 is part of
the system and it has its own version.

Who competes with a swine, becomes swine, who competes with a dog, becomes dog. FreeBSD
should compete on which it is, and not try to imitate and align with other OS on everything.
 
I think, specifications is not irrelevant. OpenBSD is not competing as a Desktop OS, it is
perhaps the last OS for "desktop users", although, in opposite to FreeBSD, X11 is part of
the system and it has its own version.
I've had several OpenBSD boxen and have an older version installed on my IBM T43. It needs rebuilt so I will probably go ahead and make a FreeBSD box out of it and use pkg, but only because it's my Precious and don't want to stress it out. I don't feel like OpenBSD is as polished a desktop OS as FreeBSD but that's not the Prime Objective of either one.

My FreeBSD pf ruleset works on an OpenBSD box with the change of one word for syntax in the egress rule. They have a different method of updating the system, mounting is done differently but it's the basic same file hierarchy. If you can run FreeBSD you can run OpenBSD.
 
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No offense intended but.. IMO that's a rather dumb name. I mean, the FreeBSD project is already a community driven effort. Wouldn't that automatically make it a community version as well?

I understand the need for the K to go into the name, but surely there are more options here? KompleteBSD, KontrolBSD, FreeKDEBSD or maybe even KDEBSD.
 
IMO that's a rather dumb name. I mean, the FreeBSD project is already a community driven effort.
Partly.
Much of the community input does not go through to those who hold the keys and choose what goes in and what keeps out.

What I am actually looking for is a Xommunity, from which the Kommunity, Gommunity etc can benefit.
I mean, graphics driver, cups, input devices etc, this belongs more to X and not to the DE.

In the end there might be no way around to an automated/scripted build, depending on the hardware present.

For example, with amdgpu there might be vt+kms, while with nvidia the safest way is building custom kernel together with using sc.
This custom build then would have to be individually script-tailored, for example in case of Nvidia Optimus or the other stuff, for which proven solutions exist that do not get integrated for reasons unknown to me.

Imho there is no need to implement this stuff separately for every DE.

(BTW, I found that for this reason GhostBSD is a no-go, as they decided to only accept kms-supporting video drivers. Doh.)
 
Why this eternal discussion on desktop? Is it because you always are at the graphical surface and otherwise
do nothing with computer? Never do a small program? Because you need all this heavy graphical machinery
to get something from the computer? Then FreeBSD is not for you, I recommend you Windows, MacOS or Linux.
You were not asking me, but to give an example I am almost always at some sort of graphical interface, as most of my work (and hobby) time is writing 'small program' that produce plots and maps and models, or I'm interpreting satellite images and visualizations of the output of simulations, or designing and simulating electronic boards. Not to mention the occasional video call, pdf reading or using a web browser. And I need my stuff to work at home and in the office and at a conference, so on laptops too.

The 'eternal discussion on desktop' may keep coming back because the core of the problem is usually misstated, which may be the reason why many attempts at solving it didn't make much of a difference. The really hard problem (not necessarily hard from the technical point of view, but difficult to find enough people motivated to work on it) is not providing an easy way to install a desktop. The hard problem is catching up and keeping up with hardware support of things like graphics and devices like laptops. People complain about how hard it is to setup a FreeBSD desktop because that's where they get stuck, but the underlying problem is missing or unstable hardware support. Once hardware is supported, then I'm sure people will write guides or make fancy desktop installers to their hearts' content, but anybody would be just as free to ignore any 'graphical nonsense'.

I've been using FreeBSD on my home servers without any problem ever since zfs became available. Piece of cake. All the while watching out for when I could use it on my laptops. To me the OS is just a tool, the fewer OS's I need to cover all my needs, the better. I need Windows for some programs, I'd like to do everything else in FreeBSD instead of also using Linux. It's obvious to me that there is not enough manpower to support non-server hardware. I also don't expect the current maintainers to do even more than they already do. It is what it is. However I'm perplexed at the attitude that making anybody who needs graphics and laptops, including most scientists and engineers, go and stay away is in any way healthy for FreeBSD.
 
Sounds like a cool idea to me, but after seeing the comments posted and votes cast is a bit discouraging. I don't know why topics like this seem to be frowned upon. It's like people aren't allowed to express their creativity. Then again, they could just be flat out giving their honest opinion without intentionally being all that negative, which is perfectly fine. Either way, I hope it works out.
 
I don't know why topics like this seem to be frowned upon. It's like people aren't allowed to express their creativity.
I don't know if they are frowned upon or the intention is to crush creativity.

To me it seems more like the old thing of lots of ideas and good intentions that aren't matched with skills or resources (mostly money). And I don't mean that rudely - I'd love for FreeBSD to be faster, have more wifi support, better graphics support, no bugs, etc., etc. But I don't have the skills to make any changes, so why chuck out ideas that I hope someone else (who can actually do the work) decides it was a brilliant idea and do it for me. For free.

I'm not saying that pertains to this particular thread, but there's a lot of it going on - "FreeBSD should support my wifi card" "FreeBSD should be a better desktop" "FreeBSD should have a nicer install to attract more users" "FreeBSD should run my Linux software that I want to use". And usually those requests are accompanied by ... nothing. No patches, no development time, no money. Just requests.

There are people who pooh-pooh anything as well and they might be crushing the creativity! Welcome to the internet.

But it's the same in many things in life. I used to attend a school parent teachers association. Lots of people would come along with their great ideas for the school or a sure-fire fund-raising idea. Nine times out of ten they wanted "someone" to run with the idea and do all the work. They didn't have the time or the skills or whatever. Wasn't it enough they'd had this wonderful idea? They'd get very offended when the response was "great idea, why don't you run with it and report back?"

I hear the same thing about school soccer groups, community hall committees, etc. Lots of creative ideas and thoughts and requests, but the same old tired people actually having to do the grinding work of realising any "vision".
 
[... big snip...]
However I'm perplexed at the attitude that making anybody who needs graphics and laptops, including most scientists and engineers, go and stay away is in any way healthy for FreeBSD.
I think you misunderstand the situation. Unlike linux, microsoft and apple (limited driver support anyway), all of the BSDs are small in developer numbers for such things.
Attempts over the years have been made to mitigate this with the adoption of the linux driver interface so that they can be used directly, but I have been assured, even linux suffers from problems with various graphics cards and bios/uefi implementations. Linux emulation lowers the burden on the already stretched resources.
As an example, it becomes a rampant case of wack a mole when every implementation of ARM comes with different requirements. Try supporting the myriad of close-source ARM implementations (everything from Raspberry Pis to ThunderXs). All with different GPUs, no less.

So, it's not an "attitude" per se that is the issue here, it's purely:
1. Will,
2. Manpower and
3. Hardware and testing.
(There's most likely others).
 
The Foundation has done a great job supporting and spearheading the DRM porting work too. I would love if WiFi and Bluetooth received the same kind of treatment. I hate wires. Some kind of AirDrop-like adhoc solution for FreeBSD would be just fantastic.
 
We, the community, have members who can do this:
  • Users who can show working configurations with their particular hardware: Many
  • Programmers who can write installer and configuration scripts: Few
  • Devs who have commit rights (to maintain user-maintained installer and configurator script packages): Almost none
    (but maybe some friendly developer@ in the forums will help out as soon as the product is good enough to use)
Basically we need at least one programmer and several users for every component.

I am working on a postinstaller which sets me up an usable system as I need it.
A main module of that will be an installer for graphics and xorg.

I want the installer to work this way:
It says "Found graphics card XYZ. Do you want me to install and configure xorg and the driver 'xyz'?"
When you accept, it autodetects which drivers are needed, downloads the most recent driver from nvidia or elsewhere, compiles, installs and configures the driver, also creating a xorg.conf (as it is stupid to have none).
Furthermore, it takes care to find and remove suspend/resume blockers, and in case the system is UEFI, also takes the necessary steps to enable hibernate (suspend to disk).

With such an installer it would be possible to install xorg without knowing anything about FreeBSD system things, graphics drivers and the like.
After that, one just needs to slap ones' preferred WM/DM over that, and voila - done!

So I would need help from others who use Intel and ATI/AMD graphics, for supplying correct configuration information and to test the WIP installer.

OK... so: WANTED:
Interested Intel, AMD and nvidia Xommunity users who are willing to join in
  • extract the relevant info from dmesg and pciconf -lv
  • show their (working) relevant parts of loader.conf, rc.conf, xorg.conf
  • test installer scripts
If we as community can manage to make an idiot proof graphics driver + xorg installer, then we will probably also be able to cooperatively make setup/configurator modules for things like WLAN, Bluetooth etc.

Edit:
If you want to help me, and have an Intel or ATI/AMD graphics card, please go to this thread and check if you can post the relevant parts of your system configuration. Thank you very much!
 
It's like people aren't allowed to express their creativity. Then again, they could just be flat out giving their honest opinion without intentionally being all that negative, which is perfectly fine. Either way, I hope it works out.

I'm a proponent of Brutal Honesty and cold hard facts, even if it paints me in a bad light.

I can only speak for myself but think I can safely say people here are sticklers for the facts and have an eye for detail so expect questions to be asked. If you're wrong you're wrong and if confronted with the facts you can_not_be_offended or it falls on you.

My only problem with it is when they want to change the base system to be more "user friendly". We have usr here and /usr/home/jitte is where I'm at home.

If they don't feel at home there this probably isn't for them. Please don't force any changes on me to make it a more Windows out-of-the-box experience so someone else not ready to put the work in to get some and more comfortable with C:\Users\jitte can feel at home.

I have a Windows toy like that and several FreeBSD computers for the rest of the things I do that don't involve playing Oblivion.
 
mcit, you make some points.

Regarding GUI, xinit+twm/fvwm/cwm should be enough for every serious use. An installation capable
of it is not a very difficult thing. And if someone cannot do it, then he will also be unable to do a lot of
trivial things with the OS. Is FreeBSD really for him? Is Windows not better for him? I think, the great
achievement of Microsoft and Apple is, that they made and make Computers for people that does not
even know what a computer is. Is that not a great achievement?

The hard problem is catching up and keeping up with hardware support of things like graphics and devices like laptops.
Yes, but not only drivers for graphical devices are needed. And why should graphical devices have
preference over other?

Most of the devices are sold with windows drivers, some with Mac drivers, few with Linux drivers.
Unfortunately, who uses other OS, will either have to write the driver or just not buy it, if someone
did not write it for him. Since I use FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Linux, I search for hardware supported, I do
not buy any hardware and demand that someone writes the driver for me.

However I'm perplexed at the attitude that making anybody who needs graphics and laptops, including most scientists and engineers, go and stay away is in any way healthy for FreeBSD.
No, that is not my attitude. But if someone wants apples, he should buy apples, not buy pears and
demand that pears taste like apples.
 
Regarding GUI, xinit+twm/fvwm/cwm should be enough for every serious use. An installation capable
of it is not a very difficult thing.
It is not difficult if you have already done it a number of times, but tedious, time-consuming and not at all rewarding to manually fill out the gap between bsdinstall and having a working desktop system.
For each computer it is a few hours of wasted setup time that can be completely automated.

I am totally fed up with that, don't want to do that tedious chore again.
For this reason I am making my postinstaller to fill this gap.
So, why not make it a community project that benefits all?
 
It is not difficult if you have already done it a number of times, but tedious, time-consuming and not at all rewarding to manually fill out the gap between bsdinstall and having a working desktop system.
It is much easier than some years ago, in many cases run now out of the box, not even writing a conf file.

One finds in the forum and mailing lists good help, or just with google. An interesting thing: it is easier to
find help/info for OpenBSD than for FreeBSD in the internet, easier for FreeBSD than for Linux. The less
number of users, the better the quality of information you get, and faster. What would bring a "Kommunity
Edition"?

But it is a good idea if you publish your postinstaller, it does not need to be part of FreeBSD, perhaps it
becomes a package.
 
It is not difficult if you have already done it a number of times, but tedious, time-consuming and not at all rewarding to manually fill out the gap between bsdinstall and having a working desktop system.
For each computer it is a few hours of wasted setup time that can be completely automated.

I am totally fed up with that, don't want to do that tedious chore again.

I can relate to what you're talking about and appreciate where you're coming from.

It took over a full 24 hour day to build everything I wanted on the desktop at first boot between the time I rebooted after the initial 12.2-RELEASE base system build and ran startx the first time on my T400 and lesser boxen.

But I don't see it as a tedious task. I see it as a labor of love, ability and individualism to get my own ground-up custom built FreeBSD desktop complied by me from source and like no other you see in any screenshot.

Mine don't appeal to everyone. Not everyone likes the way mine are configured, the way I leave things open for easy access from boot, etc. and I'm good with that. But that's the way I work with and run mine and doesn't have to be yours. And that's what it's about IMO.
 
Snurg

seems to be a very good idea,
In my case I dont will use it but
allmost 70%(I think) of admins create scripts post-instalation for their servers(including myself)
so..is not bad or something for "newbies desktop fan boys" exclusively

is just a option for who want to use it, will not be included in the default image of the system
so..good

In my desktops with 12.2 I create an script with dialog
that ask for what geli
mount point I want to get up, ask for passphrase 3 times..mount the point and close

will be a good idea make a .. I dont know..a web page, wiki, forum?
with all of this knowleges and more

regarding the desktop instalation took me the time of the download speed of the packages (xorg,fvwm,pcmanfm,lilyterm,feh,gpicview,nvidia-xconfig,nvidia-settings) plus build the nvidia driver from ports (3 minutes more or less)
and 5/7 minutes to set up fvwm with my config
easy as that
 
It took over a full 24 hour day to build everything I wanted on the desktop at first boot between the time I rebooted after the initial 12.2-RELEASE base system build and ran startx the first time on my T400 and lesser boxen.
Yes, everybody is different :)
I hate things that are "system administration", setting up stuff etc.
I always forget details, have to re-read documentation because of this and so it takes long until I am satisfied.
And my desktop is absolutely minimalistic, just a FvwmPager with 3 desktops each 16 screens.
Any more decoration would drive me mad due to my ADHD.

In my desktops with 12.2 I create an script with dialog
that ask for what geli
mount point I want to get up, ask for passphrase 3 times..mount the point and close

will be a good idea make a .. I dont know..a web page, wiki, forum?
with all of this knowleges and more
Definitely! Encryption is always good!
I would like that, but I do not know how :'‑(
The problem is to collect the know-how needed - always takes a lot of time to do new stuff right.
So if you could make a HOWTO article, I am sure many people will appreciate it much!
 
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