will freebsd15 have default desktop?

vermaden said:
If you want FreeBSD with desktop - then get GhostBSD - comes with MATE and XFCE flavors.

FreeBSD is a general purpose operating system - it does not come as desktop or server or IoT or as embedded appliance.
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I do believe since the moment it does not come with a GUI is obligatory a server/iot/appliance operative system.
 
tyson said:
But it comes with GUI, but not default one. Nothing forces you to not install one you prefer.
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A desktop operative system by default comes all the features you need to use your computer with a GUI, I don't recall in the FreeBSD installer the options to install a DE or X11.
 
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oops said:
Good luck getting FreeBSD users to agree on a single DE (Thread 83906).
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And the problem with that is....?
Honestly, that is a good thing. KDE and other DEs bring a lot of overhead. Simple window managers like twm, windowmaker don't have as much.

It always comes down to "what should the default install do"

My opinion, default install should give a user a coherent command line login, functional at a terminal/console level, but easily allow a user to install the graphical envrionment of their choice.

Look at all the distributions of Ubuntu. What is the difference? Default DE installed. From a user POV, does that mean "I hate KDE, do I need to start from scratch to install GNOME?"; the reality is "install base Ubuntu, then install the KDE/GNOME/whateverDE meta port"
 
mer said:
[…]
My opinion, default install should give a user a coherent command line login, functional at a terminal/console level, but easily allow a user to install the graphical envrionment of their choice.
[…]
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Are the three lines below really that hard to type in yourself:
Code: 
$ sudo pkg install xorg <window-manager-of-your-choice>
$ echo "exec <window-manager-of-your-choice>" > ~/.xinitrc
$ startx
 
mer said:
Look at all the distributions of Ubuntu. What is the difference? Default DE installed. From a user POV, does that mean "I hate KDE, do I need to start from scratch to install GNOME?"; the reality is "install base Ubuntu, then install the KDE/GNOME/whateverDE meta port"
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It is easier to do "pkg install something" than first disable the default to do that.

And since most people do not want any default GUI, because there are many choices and people have different tastes,
it is better no default.

I am tired of these recurrent, endless threads about desktop.

People that want a default GUI must use a OS with default GUI, perhaps Ubuntu, Linux Mint, MacOS, Windows.
 
hruodr said:
I am tired of these recurrent, endless threads about desktop.
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Aren't we all? If only we could get majority support for an FAQ entry we could link to ...

hruodr said:
People that want a default GUI must use a OS with default GUI, perhaps Ubuntu, Linux Mint, MacOS, Windows.
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Yes, there are so many of these to choose from - including GhostBSD. Why damage FreeBSD's installer for the majority of its users to (perhaps?) satisfy any small, partisan minority?
 
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smithi said:
Why damage FreeBSD's installer for the majority of its users to (perhaps?) satisfy any small, partisan minority?
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Of people with fewer than 5 posts....

In theory documentation should take care of it.
"Do the base install, configure it, then if you want a desktop, pkg install <one of the GUI things>"

I think there is a port that actually walks you through "pick one of the following DE's to install".

But that is not the job of the installer; the installer should end at "you have a fully functional system, if you want anything else, go to the handbook"

But just my opinions and in the grand scheme of things, my opinion isn't worth a hill of beans.
 
mer said:
But just my opinions and in the grand scheme of things, my opinion isn't worth a hill of beans.
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Don't underrate yourself. Anything that may deflect yet another flight of fancy from new people with few posts is worth a try ...
 
hruodr said:
I am tired of these recurrent, endless threads about desktop.

People that want a default GUI must use a OS with default GUI, perhaps Ubuntu, Linux Mint, MacOS, Windows.
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To me the Foundation is underrating the importance of Flagship Desktop Operative System, this is the cheapest way (not really sure about this statement) to spread an opensource OS: Ubuntu docet.

It is thanks to its desktop version that Ubuntu made a name on the enterprise space eating progressively Debian. For instance the foundation might endorse a project like GhostBSD or Nomad and allowing users to have a discussion here.

It will solve a lot of complaining and make everyone happy... ?
 
freezr said:
To me the Foundation is underrating the importance of Flagship Desktop Operative System, this is the cheapest way (not really sure about this statement) to spread an opensource OS: Ubuntu docet.
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Because Ubuntu wanted to fight her way against debian, and force their hand into the market. They came late to the game and didn't had other way. They enter into the desktop market and way later into server market. Ubuntu was never a general purpose OS from start, wasn't even a server OS from start.
freezr said:
It is thanks to its desktop version that Ubuntu made a name on the enterprise space eating progressively Debian. For instance the foundation might endorse a project like GhostBSD or Nomad and allowing users to have a discussion here.
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Ubuntu didn't eat any space from debian, this are different waters. Canonical is a company that often get paid to help development for many softwares, of course this software will eventually make ubuntu as a first class citizen.
GhostBSD isn't part of FreeBSD ecosystem, it's just a derivative. Why don't you ask debian lists to have ubuntu?
freezr said:
It will solve a lot of complaining and make everyone happy... ?
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It makes only a small group of people happy: the people that don't want to understand a simple thing.
It's like people that don't understand why FreeBSD doesn't have flatpak.
 
menelkir

I respectfully disagree, I don't want to dig into Canonical too much but it is true that Ubuntu Desktop leveraged Ubuntu into the server space, and exposed Linux to a lot of people, including youngsters, many of them now are Linux contributors in many different ways. Many years ago having a full Linux desktop was a PITA, Ubuntu solved this, today installing a Linux distribution is a breeze with 99% of the major distribution including Debian.

It can be the same for FreeBSD, actually they are taking this concept seriously, I do believe something is moving in that direction. Meanwhile endorsing an existent project might be seen as a starting point, even though it isn't part of the ecosystem. I don't believe it is wrong in this forum asking for help for projects related with FreeBSD even if aren't into the "official" ecosystem, clearly this is my personal opinion.
 
freezr said:
It can be the same for FreeBSD
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That's a bit of a pipe-dream, isn't it?

The BSDs are amazing, but the sheer amount of resources thrown at Linux (IBM, Google, Microsoft, Redhat, etc.) and its ubiquity - it is always going to be a game of catch-up.

As soon as "someone" manages to get the newer Wifi or GPUs working with FreeBSD, the next lot will come out, and the manufacturers will have worked on drivers for Windows, possibly Linux, but BSDs ... nope.

If you are developing an open source project on Linux, why would you spend extra time making sure it works on platforms with far smaller user bases? I'm glad a lot of open source developers do so, but can imagine it would be a struggle at times.

It's definitely not all gloom & doom and I appreciate all the work that goes into the BSDs. But they just don't have the resources to keep up with Linux across ALL fronts. Choices have to be made.

I'll use a BSD when I can, but if if something works better on another platform, I'll use that platform.
 
freezr said:
I respectfully disagree, I don't want to dig into Canonical too much but it is true that Ubuntu Desktop leveraged Ubuntu into the server space, and exposed Linux to a lot of people, including youngsters, many of them now are Linux contributors in many different ways. Many years ago having a full Linux desktop was a PITA, Ubuntu solved this, today installing a Linux distribution is a breeze with 99% of the major distribution including Debian.
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No, what brought linux to light was redhat in 2001, that's where other distributions came to light. Canonical get more famous because they distributed CDs for free around the world.
Before Canonical, redhat, mandrake and suse sold A LOT of supports, including banks. Source? Me, I was part of the core team responsible for the implementation of linux in a south america banks, the implementation was quite known to that era.
freezr said:
It can be the same for FreeBSD, actually they are taking this concept seriously, I do believe something is moving in that direction. Meanwhile endorsing an existent project might be seen as a starting point, even though it isn't part of the ecosystem.
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Again, FreeBSD is a general purpose operating system, no strings attached, but no one prevents you to make a fork on your own and use whatever DE/WM you want. You want a desktop OS, FreeBSD isn't a desktop OS, but nothing prevents you to do so. That's the difference no one wants to understand because they want something that doesn't exists.
freezr said:
I don't believe it is wrong in this forum asking for help for projects related with FreeBSD even if aren't into the "official" ecosystem, clearly this is my personal opinion.
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Again, try talking about Ubuntu or derivate in Debian lists and see what happens. Try asking for help with Artix on Arch forums. You're welcome to try any of those.
Wanna know why they don't? Because those distributions introduce custom stuff most members don't know what it is. Isn't bad, but it's impossible to understand unless you're actually using the stuff, so it's useless. But what prevents you to ask GhostBSD people directly to begin with?
 
hruodr said:
It is easier to do "pkg install something" than first disable the default to do that.

And since most people do not want any default GUI, because there are many choices and people have different tastes,
it is better no default.

I am tired of these recurrent, endless threads about desktop.

People that want a default GUI must use a OS with default GUI, perhaps Ubuntu, Linux Mint, MacOS, Windows.
Click to expand...
I experienced something along these lines just yesterday. I have a laptop computer that I have been testing things with FreeBSD on. I had initially wanted to try out x11/budgie as my DE. I had also installed my standard, x11/xfce. I decided I didn't like budgie, did a basic uninstall using pkg delete budgie. Everything seems to be working fine, but I decided yesterday to do some cleanup, and ran pkg autoremove and a bunch of budgie stuff was uninstalled. The problem is that budgie had hooked so deeply into the system that it broke my xfce menus. Even after removing all packages and clearing out my user profile, it still had xfce broken. I ended up wiping and re-installing the whole system. I know I probably could have figured it out, but for this computer, it was much faster that way.

So what if FreeBSD came with a default desktop environment? If I don't like it, it may not be that easy to uninstall and switch. The beauty of FreeBSD, and one of the things that continuously attracts new users is that the system can be whatever you make of it. Whether you want a headless server, a dedicated network switch, or a full blown multimedia gaming station, the choice is up to you the end user.

Another thing people should ask themselves before starting these types of threads - Did the lack of a default desktop stop you from trying FreeBSD? Maybe it intimidated you, and you were hesitant to try, but ultimately, have you ever tried using FreeBSD? If you have, and have a desktop environment, look at what finally convinced you to try it and focus on expanding the knowledge gained from that experience into advocacy. If you have not yet tried FreeBSD, why are you complaining on the user support forum? Instead, ask for help, and we are more than happy to point you in the direction you need to go with anything you want to do.
 
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