Those of you who have used GhostBSD please share your experience

For me GhostBSD doesn't work as a desktop, it has a problem with setting proper graphics driver, intel driver is missing, and drm doesn't work. In comparison, in FreeBSD intel driver is also missing, but drm works. The best in this area is NomadBSD, it has a working intel driver.
 
NomadBSD is a good idea. It works well for me. I'm actually in disagreement with the many who think that making FreeBSD more accessible is a bad thing. I think that one reason Linux is so far ahead in things like wireless is that there are many versions accessible to the Windows convert, and probably some of those go on to do the development.
 
john_rambo said:
… GhostBSD uses its own repo …
Click to expand...

Spun off from the five screenshots at <https://forums.freebsd.org/posts/554819>:

1644171021444.png 1644171147811.png 1644171234219.png 1644171781955.png

CustardBSD Marmite, She Wrote edition:
  • GhostBSD kernel and userland
  • KDE Plasma
  • I. Am. In. So. Much. Trouble.
 
I tried it (GhostBSD) once or twice. First impression was really good, graphical interface available just after booting, zsh as default shell and so on. I was impressed. Then I wanted to tweak some things, install some packages and had a lot of problems with stuff that (at least for me) is simpler in "vanilla" FreeBSD. And similarly to answers above Mate is not my weapon of choice and changing it to something else was not trivial. I returned to FreeBSD, spent some time with configuration and now I'm the happiest user.
 
Beastie7 said:
It's literally using the exact same base system and ports framework. It's not any different than BSD Unix from CSRG being birthed from Research Unix. The rest is policy.
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From the perspective of somebody like me, trying to figure out which operating system to switch to, if I switch at all, (I'm on ubuntu), It -isn't- the same operating system if the people in a forum like this one won't help with problems because it isn't "officially" exactly the same distribution. sure it has it's own forums, and maybe they are very effective at solving problems. maybe it's easy to find documentation explaining things. maybe. free-bsd, having a large community, offers much more of a guarantee of this kind of thing, making it a safer investment. unfortunately, I've tried installing freebsd in the past, and had a bad experience. so something like ghost might be what is needed to bring me into the bsd fold. it's unfortunate that "only post questions for a given operating system in forums dedicated to that operating system", even when the systems are as similar as these two, put me off. of of both of them. it's like I don't feel like being associated with a community that is that strict. sad, really.
 
Technically, you can ask for help here, though you have to show where you asked on their forums or mailing list, and label the thread. It's not easy to do. The exceptions are in that rule Thread ghostbsd-pfsense-truenas-and-all-other-freebsd-derivatives.7290. We can also discuss it, as off topic as we're doing here.

For threads that have the ghostbsd tag, but the ones in the news section are excluded:
forums.freebsd.org

ghostbsd

forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

There's a few forums about multiple BSDs:

UnitedBSD - https://www.unitedbsd.com

Daemon forums - https://daemonforums.org

There's also an IRC room for overall BSD operating systems and software.


One time, I used NetBSD in an attempt to access hardrives through a SATA card, the people in the NetBSD IRC room were friendly and eager to help. When I used that OS, even if for a short time, I was there as an official user.

Some time before that, I used NetBSD on the desktop. It was good that I could learn about it even for the short times Ive used it.

From desktop use of NetBSD, I've learned only one audio application could play at a time, and the graphics were primitive and used low resolution. Perhaps, I didn't know how to configure the graphics, but they were still primitive. Since then, they say that's improved.

When trying to use drivers (on NetBSD), the /dev/ directory isn't easy, because all driver files are shown, loaded or not. That's overwhelming, when FreeBSD's drivers load dynamically, so you can more easily see what you have.

One area where NetBSD and another BSD (I think it was OpenBSD) were more advanced than FreeBSD, until recently was the HID system, which was for keyboards, mice and other input drivers. I didn't experience configuring that, though I've read about it.

In that way, you can discuss help for FreeBSD, then compare your learning with GhostBSD.

Edit: I realized that the exception for technical help applies to FreeBSD derivatives, not NetBSD at all. My point about NetBSD was, that I was an official user enough for it to be relevant on their venues. This is still helpful for comparisons of NetBSD to FreeBSD.
 
mikethe1wheelnut said:
From the perspective of somebody like me, trying to figure out which operating system to switch to, if I switch at all, (I'm on ubuntu), It -isn't- the same operating system if the people in a forum like this one won't help with problems because it isn't "officially" exactly the same distribution. sure it has it's own forums, and maybe they are very effective at solving problems. maybe it's easy to find documentation explaining things. maybe. free-bsd, having a large community, offers much more of a guarantee of this kind of thing, making it a safer investment. unfortunately, I've tried installing freebsd in the past, and had a bad experience. so something like ghost might be what is needed to bring me into the bsd fold. it's unfortunate that "only post questions for a given operating system in forums dedicated to that operating system", even when the systems are as similar as these two, put me off. of of both of them. it's like I don't feel like being associated with a community that is that strict. sad, really.
Click to expand...

I think your frustrations are misplaced. For one, FreeBSD is a second class citizen for most open source DEs, and two it's an entirely separate set of services from base; so the committer (or contributor for that matter) community has no obligation to provide support for it. This eases workload on an otherwise resource constraint project. The only reason why there's five bajillion spins of ubuntu flavors is because Canonical and Co. are funding those efforts. The only way you'd get the kind of experience you're looking for is if FreeBSD provided their own display server/toolkit/desktop in base; which is a pipe dream.

Maybe you can beg the FreeBSD/KDE Initiative to release their own spin of a BSD desktop. Good luck though.
 
Beastie7 said:
I think your frustrations are misplaced. For one, FreeBSD is a second class citizen for most open source DEs, and two it's an entirely separate set of services from base; so the committer (or contributor for that matter) community has no obligation to provide support for it. This eases workload on an otherwise resource constraint project. The only reason why there's five bajillion spins of ubuntu flavors is because Canonical and Co. are funding those efforts. The only way you'd get the kind of experience you're looking for is if FreeBSD provided their own display server/toolkit/desktop in base; which is a pipe dream.

Maybe you can beg the FreeBSD/KDE Initiative to release their own spin of a BSD desktop. Good luck though.
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In other words, be grateful for what you have :) ..a humorous way of describing this situation just occurred to me: "your ignorance doesn't give you the right to complain" :) the freebsd community caters to people willing/able to do the work of learning about the operating system. That's totally fair. :) I'm going to try ghostbsd first. If it works, I can take the next step :)
 
GhostBSD is ok. Their forums have very little activity. I used it on a system for about a month. It was basically just using FreeBSD but I wasn't sure what had been done on the system since I didn't do it myself, but a script set everything up. It may be a good testing system to get a general idea of peripheral support. But other than that I would suggest using FreeBSD and following the handbook.

After setting up 5 or so desktops and laptops it doesn't take but a few minutes to get a desktop going on FreeBSD. That's how I use the system.

Once you've learned the handbook and used it many times you likely won't need it after a bit.

Although I am still figuring out many things, I feel comfortable installing FreeBSD and using it more than I do a system like GhostBSD.

There are some contributions that have been made by GhostBSD I like and use. The wifi manager is very nice of you're using a mobile system or wifi in general. It's available in ports as well so they share with FreeBSD which is very nice.
 
john_rambo said:
The only thing that I don't like is the fact that GhostBSD uses its own repo which as far as I know is synced with the FreeBSD repos.
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Its a great thing actually - that GhostBSD has its own repository.

The default (bad) policy of FreeBSD is to build packages or OLDER version for 3 months after new version is released.

For example - when 13.2 was released - they will still build 'quarterly' and 'latest' packages on 13.1 and not on 13.2.

This does not have consequences for userspace applications - but all 66+ kernel related packages are BROKEN FOR 3 MONTHS.

That includes drm-kmod for graphics and virtualbox-ose kernel modules for example.

So here GhostBSD ALWAYS have packages built against their version and they always work.

... and from all graphical FreeBSD systems I like GhostBSD the most - both XFCE and MATE versions worked well for me.
 
eternal_noob said:
You're absolutely correct. I think there is no point in using those derivatives. They can't accomplish something what the original isn't able to.
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Call it a matter of perspective, but this is not true. In my case, the barrier to adoption of freebsd is too high. Not so for ghostBSD. Given that ghostBSD seems to be the ubuntu of bsd. I'll be able to "get used to", "test out" bsd using ghostBSD, so that, when the time comes, if it ever does, for me to become a true-blue bsd user, I can dive down the "real" rabbit-hole of bsd, both with more knowledge, and more confidence. So you should thank those few people maintaining these "intermediate" distributions. They will likely funnel more contributing community members your way :)
 
mikethe1wheelnut said:
Call it a matter of perspective, but this is not true. In my case, the barrier to adoption of freebsd is too high. Not so for GhostBSD. Given that GhostBSD seems to be the ubuntu of bsd. I'll be able to "get used to", "test out" bsd using GhostBSD, so that, when the time comes, if it ever does, for me to become a true-blue bsd user, I can dive down the "real" rabbit-hole of bsd, both with more knowledge, and more confidence. So you should thank those few people maintaining these "intermediate" distributions. They will likely funnel more contributing community members your way :)
Click to expand...
That is what I try to communicate to FreeBSD Foundation and other 'power' FreeBSD users or people that use FreeBSD on servers only.

If You can not have all these tools and 'FreeBSD feeling' all day long by working on a FreeBSD desktop - You got used to Linux thingies or macOS thingies ... and actually You start to prefer them instead of FreeBSD as You feel more at home and more at control on them then on FreeBSD which You only use on a server.

While Apple killed their server line along with Mac OS X Server edition there are a lot of Linux systems for servers to choose from ... and that is what happens everyday. People using Linux on their laptops - no surprise here - prefer to also use Linux on the servers.

That is why GhostBSD (and other GUI FreeBSD editions) are important. When You use FreeBSD daily on your desktop - you have all the FreeBSD technologies at hand and you use them - and this is what is then more natural and more at control later when you want to use them in a server environment.

My $0.02 on the topic ...
 
My name is Richard Sexton (...gryphon!richard). I've programmed in C since 1974, and have used unix since 1976. I've used FreeBSD from version 2.22 on, daily and use the current release on all my servers and have since 1995.
I used Windows at home and I really hate it. I've never used Linux, as a programmer the BSD model is more coherant (and I think, faster). But I use windows at home.
Or used to. I only use thinkpad/lenovo laptops (cause parts are abundant, well made and cheap) and I have tried (for hours) over the years to get X up, hoping one day I could have a bsd GUI but no dice. Recently I tried to install a gui unix on a machine and tried "Ubuntu Creative" which seemed to be ok. Then I found, by complete random chance, GhostBSD, installed it and it worked. More so, the f'ing SOUND worked which even Windows can't get right, nor linux. That alone impressed me.
I've lived with it now for a month. It works the same as windows or a mac but it's less silly and you can change bits you need/want. But the thing that gets me is you can be up in literally minutes, running a gui BSD. I wished I'd had this in 2000! The time saved, (lost to windows silliness: "It just doesn't WORK" - djb) would have been immense. But never mind, it's here now and it works. All parts of it work. Oh, it does run the fan more than Windows did. AFAIK that's the only thing it doesn't do better than windoze.
I'm not here to advocate for it, simply as a longtime unix/FreeBSD user to point out, if you don't have a gui Freebsd system and want one, this seems to work ok.
If noting else it puts life back into old computers that really can't do any modern (>8) windows, lacking sufficient ram to do so, but under Ghost, even with 2GB ram, it works (win still falls over a lot w/ 4GB)
So, yeah, I recommend Ghost, it's cool and it works and has good people it seems and more interesting to me is the directions it and its descendants might go. Is this now the start of the golden age of the FreeBSD desktop? Could this or something like this be instrumental in getting FreeBSD everywhere? I think it might. Who... nose?

Thank you for your rapt attention. Now get back to work.

Cheers,
rs
 
I did some research on it (their website, YouTube, forums, etc) and decided it might be a cool flavor of FreeBSD to try. So I installed it to use as a local file server. Unfortunately, I found it to be rough and inflexible to use, maybe because I'm used to configuring the OSes I install from the ground up.

I do think it can improve and has a potential to be a great Live medium that can serve multiple purposes such as a rescue or even pentesting.
 
youngunix said:
… local file server. Unfortunately, I found it to be rough and inflexible …
Click to expand...

Please: rough and inflexible in what ways?

I'm used to configuring …
Click to expand...

Knowledge of configuring FreeBSD should be applicable to FreeBSD as the basis for GhostBSD.

Does setup-station create any significant obstacle?

{link removed}
 
Last edited:
grahamperrin said:
Please: rough and inflexible in what ways?



Knowledge of configuring FreeBSD should be applicable to FreeBSD as the basis for GhostBSD.

Does setup-station create any significant obstacle?

github.com

GitHub - ghostbsd/setup-station: GhostBSD setup at the first boot.

GhostBSD setup at the first boot. Contribute to ghostbsd/setup-station development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
Click to expand...
I cannot recall every minute aspect of the evaluation, but my final analysis indicated that the effort required to tailor it to my requirements surpasses that of utilizing FreeBSD and customizing it to my preferences.

Then again, that's my experience and opinion and others might not reach the same conclusion.
 
am moving from my own distro with custom kernel and boot. Tried every current linux on my old nucs and they fail to boot. Bsd worked. Tried nomad, midnight, ghost and many more. Ghost is up to linux standards on its live iso and actualy runs on my machines. Ghost is the future for me
 
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