FreeBSD, TrueOS, Project Trident

I'm just trying to understand. Is it that FreeBSD will become TrueOS and what is now TrueOS will become Project Trident? I am confused.
 
TrueOS is an independent project that builds a system on top of the FreeBSD operating system. It's FreeBSD with some of their own pre-built packages to help create a Desktop system.
I've not bothered to find out about Trident.
 
  • Both TrueOS and Trident are FreeBSD distros.
  • Lumina is a DE.
Trident combines TrueOS for its base system and Lumina for the desktop components.
 
Is it that FreeBSD will become TrueOS and what is now TrueOS will become Project Trident?
FreeBSD will always remain FreeBSD, it's handled by the FreeBSD foundation and not going anywhere. Just because some other projects build upon FreeBSD doesn't automatically imply that they're also affecting it.

Anyway, I did some research and I can't help but wonder if we're not seeing the beginning of the end for some projects. From this page:
TrueOS will become a downstream fork that will build on FreeBSD by integrating new software technologies like OpenRC and LibreSSL. Work has already begun which allows TrueOS to be used as a base platform for other projects, including JSON-based manifests, integrated Poudriere / pkg tools and much more. We’re planning on a six month release cycle to keep development moving and fresh, allowing us to bring you hot new features to ZFS, bhyve and related tools in a timely manner. This makes TrueOS the perfect fit to serve as the basis for building other distributions.
Seems like TrueOS is trying to become the Ubuntu of FreeBSD. I still shudder at the thought of some of the weird stuff Canonical pulled off, especially in comparison to Debian.

And then there's of course this:
We know that some of you will still be looking for an out-of-the-box solution similar to legacy PC-BSD and TrueOS. We’re happy to announce that Project Trident will take over graphical FreeBSD development going forward. Not much is going to change in that regard other than a new name! You’ll still have Lumina Desktop as a lightweight and feature-rich desktop environment and tons of utilities from the legacy TrueOS toolchain like sysadm and AppCafe. There will be migration paths available for those that would like to move to other FreeBSD-based distributions like Project Trident or GhostBSD.
Don't get me wrong: I wish them all the best, if they can work this out then all the more power to them.

But at the same time I also get skeptical when I see articles throwing buzzwords around. "Hot new features". Is that to make a better product or to try and make a more appealing product which they can then sell? Not the product itself of course, that'll be available free of charge, but the support on the other hand... And of course they keep relying on FreeBSD ;)

Like I said: all the power to them. But I can't help pick this up as downsizing. Then again, I'm heavily biased :D

Bottom line: all of this has nothing to do with FreeBSD.
 
FreeBSD will always remain FreeBSD, it's handled by the FreeBSD foundation and not going anywhere. Just because some other projects build upon FreeBSD doesn't automatically imply that they're also affecting it.

Anyway, I did some research and I can't help but wonder if we're not seeing the beginning of the end for some projects. From this page:

Seems like TrueOS is trying to become the Ubuntu of FreeBSD. I still shudder at the thought of some of the weird stuff Canonical pulled off, especially in comparison to Debian.

And then there's of course this:

Don't get me wrong: I wish them all the best, if they can work this out then all the more power to them.

But at the same time I also get skeptical when I see articles throwing buzzwords around. "Hot new features". Is that to make a better product or to try and make a more appealing product which they can then sell? Not the product itself of course, that'll be available free of charge, but the support on the other hand... And of course they keep relying on FreeBSD ;)

Like I said: all the power to them. But I can't help pick this up as downsizing. Then again, I'm heavily biased :D

Bottom line: all of this has nothing to do with FreeBSD.
Thank for explaining, but I think how you can see how someone can get confused with all of this.
 
Seems like TrueOS is trying to become the Ubuntu of FreeBSD. I still shudder at the thought of some of the weird stuff Canonical pulled off, especially in comparison to Debian.
You know what I find strange about this. Granted I am new guy here.
But the pfSense poject seems to be sending weird vibes too.
It started with a 'Community Edition' moniker and then next thing you know they 'switched' the project license to Apache License. Then they also came out with one of these 'oblique' statements that sounded like they were moving away from FreeBSD for their base.

So luckily we have a fork with OPNSense.
When Manuel from monoWall endorsed OPNSense the netgate guy wanted to blow his stack on twitter.

It all a big sad soap opera. The bad thing is the Foundation could lose some sponsors.
Maybe that ain't so bad if us users stepped up.
Problem is controversial things like COC have me reserved about donations. I am privately offering developers surplus boards.
 
For better or worse, in my humble opinion, Ubuntu did more to get Linux considered by both hardware and software vendors than did RedHat or anything else. At the time, (and I'm ignoring the bad things here, such as the search later being sent to Amazon unless you opted out, etc.) it gave many people a Linux that worked and was easy to use. This increased Linux's popularity quite a bit, and as I said, got more hardware and software manufacturers thinking about being able to work with Linux. And most of the bad things can be overridden if you go minimal, and even if they can't, the other Linux distributions have also benefited.

So, if TrueOS, or whatever its latest incarnation is, makes FreeBSD more maintstream, I don't think that's a bad thing. It might mean an increase in
hardware and software support. Right now, my wireless NIC can do 30-40 MB on my LAN on Linux and 2-12MB on FreeBSD.

However, I think TrueOS or its desktop division are going to have to get a lot better before it works as well for this time as Ubuntu did at that time.
 
scottro I agree with your opinion but we'd then have to take the bitter with the batter. An increase in amateur activity who only own a computer for the sole purpose of playing games and not professional purposes. Then you have a dilution of contributors who have to fill that need.

On one hand, professional users don't care about popularity of the OS. As long as one can obtain hardware and software that lets them do their work, then there is no need for an influx of such users. And FreeBSD is there, where one can find almost everything a Linux professional uses on that system. On the other hand, it's nice to be able to find the "almost" part of what's missing when you need it and there isn't anything else. But that's why such organizations have programmers on hand who can write such code themselves rather than searching or waiting for someone else to write a library/framework/plugin for them as is so prevalent today.
 
Yeah, that's a tough one, and I admit it. I often say stuff like, Well, I like that say Fedora (which I use sometimes) is easy to get working with wireless, video, blah blah, but then I say I hate how Windows like (which may be a bad description--I don't work with Windows much) Fedora has become with, as a cynic on the Fedora forums would say, having its training wheels welded on. So, I don't have a good answer. I like to think I'm not a hypocrite, just a person who wants what they want and doesn't wanna take the bad with the good.
 
In the beginning, there was FreeBSD, and it was grand!

But getting a working X11-based desktop system setup was a pain, so PC-BSD was born. This was a standard FreeBSD system with a GUI installer and new binary package system for apps. And there was much rejoicing in the homes.

Then ZFS came along and disrupted things, making many things easier/safer for both desktops and servers. The PC-BSD folks thought they could take their automated tools and make an even better server system, and TruOS was born. And there was much rejoicing ... somewhere.

But then all the desktops were tempted by the evil systemd overlords and added Linuxisms everywhere, making development harder for the non-Linux OSes. The PC-BSD folks rose up in retaliation and Lumina, a desktop environment for BSDs was born. Many cheers were heard.

Then, because it was too easy to understand the PC-BSD/TruOS split, everything was renamed to just TruOS. But that led to confusion, so Lumina and desktop-side of TruOS joined together to form Project Trident to bring a better desktop setup to those wanting a FreeBSD-based system, while the server-side of TruOS does its own thing in the non-gui space. Or something like that. Not really sure what they're all doing now. :)

Through it all, FreeBSD continued being FreeBSD. :D
 
It's quite embarrassing. All this shuffling because they're too lazy to back port driver support. They had the right approach with PC-BSD; providing a stable system on the -RELEASE branch, with BSD centric utilities.

but noooo, it's too much work to keep up with the KDE port; yet a few set of folks were able to successfully port KDE 5.x.

but noooo, they must re-invent themselves a million times because why not? Either way iXsystems are stuffing their pockets; damn with confusing users, damn with consistency.
 
It's simple really, and very encouraging. PCBSD was a popular way to setup a FreeBSD desktop system because it provided a decent graphical installer and a pre-configured KDE desktop. They moved to using TrueOS because they needed improved graphics support coming out of the drm-next branch of development. Now that official FreeBSD releases 11.2 and (soon) 12.0 have merged drm-next work and have the needed graphics support, and now that intrepid FreeBSD ports developers have persevered in working on the freebsd-kde development branch (aka area51) and FreeBSD has merged Plasma 5 into our ports -- Trident will throw all of its manpower into supporting these mainline works almost doubling the number of developers committed to the development of a great FreeBSD desktop!

Trident will be releasing a pre-configured and well-tested FreeBSD desktop system using their famous graphical installer and zfs administration tools with the beautiful KDE Plasma 5 desktop!

Then I woke up. <grin>
 
It's starting to sound like download FreeBSD + Lumina is the way for me from Arch. I just want my computer to run smoothly and not randomly crash. I hope FreeBSD is the solution. I was tempted with TruOS but when I saw Project Trident I realized it is trying to do just that for someone switching like me. Next, I have to figure out how to emulate and install the Lumina.
 
I was so hopeful that I could get an easy to maintain FreeBSD laptop.

I have 5 laptops running FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p2 with x11-wm/fluxbox as a WM and they are incredibly easy to maintain IMO. Once I have the base system and my 3rd party programs installed from ports, my documents edited and programs configured it's as easy as running 3 commands daily and taking it from there:

Code:
# portsnap fetch update
# pkg audit -F
# freebsd-update fetch

Crashes are not something I experience with any of my laptops. They are all very stable and reliable machines, and I know that's what I'm going to get every time out of a build without fail.

Edit: I have 4 laptops running 11.2. My Thinkpad X61 FreeBSD MP3 player laptop is still at 11.1. It never needs to go online, could not possibly be running better, and I've decided that falls under the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" rule.
 
Wow, you're all speaking my language. Can't believe I didn't make it to BSD before. This is very, very encouraging.

A little bit more reading and all machines are going to be candidates here.
 
I have 5 laptops running FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p1 with x11-wm/fluxbox as a WM and they are incredibly easy to maintain IMO. Once I have the base system and my 3rd party programs installed from ports, my documents edited and programs configured it's as easy as running 3 commands daily and taking it from there:

Code:
# portsnap fetch update
# pkg audit -F
# freebsd-update fetch

Crashes are not something I experience with any of my laptops. They are all very stable and reliable machines, and I know that's what I'm going to get every time out of a build without fail.

Edit: I have 4 laptops running 11.2. My Thinkpad X61 FreeBSD MP3 player laptop is still at 11.1. It never needs to go online, could not possibly be running better, and I've decided that falls under the "if it ain't broke don't fix it." rule.

I didn't think fluxbox had been ported. It's such a lightweight. I used to like Enlightment but a decade ago and settled on Cinamon under Linux. I hear some people got Plasma to work.
 
I didn't think fluxbox had been ported.

Yes, it's what I use on all my machines. I don't like a Desktop Environment or someones idea of what programs I should have installed by default. I have a limited number of programs I install on a regular basis I prefer for general desktop activities and my own desktop configuration to make the most of my workspace and style.

If you've seen one DE you've seen most of them sans wallpaper IMO. My screenshots are easy to spot, though most don't care for my config at all.
 
Yes, it's what I use on all my machines. I don't like a Desktop Environment or someones idea of what programs I should have installed by default. I have a limited number of programs I install on a regular basis I prefer for general desktop activities and my own desktop configuration to make the most of my workspace and style.

If you've seen one DE you've seen most of them sans wallpaper IMO. My screenshots are easy to spot, though most don't care for my config at all.

I agree. I have a new machine with enough power to run eye-candy things. I'll use a pretty DE for that. The laptop and old iMac will have Fluxbox, if I get it to work.

You just don't know what a relief it is to read what you wrote. I'm a journalist that covers another field, it makes me want to write something on Medium that asks why aren't people using FreeBSD?
 
Project Trident is broken nonsense. Just downloaded the 3gig iso today to test it out - wasted a good hour of my day messing with it.
 
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