FreeBSD Foundation Flounders on 15 with Rust, pkgbase, and KDE

vermaden said:
One thing really scares me - a thing that I did not knew before - and its written in this comment:
- https://github.com/freebsd/pkg/issues/2485#issuecomment-3133396711

To quote:


So with PKGBASE the pkg delete -af command will WIPE almost all FreeBSD Base System including /rescue tools - so one will be left even without vi(1) (or any other) editor ...

That is far from POLA for my standards.

I would expect LOTS of misuses of pkg delete command with these defaults ... lots of guides on the Internet say 'just remove all the packages - its safe - you will still have your Base System' ... not sure if I have and good thoughts about these defaults ... but probably there is some logic behind these decisions that I just do not understand ...

So for now - with PKGBASE - start to remember this one single rule - never use pkg delete -af command ...
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Well all this sounds to me like PkgBase is not ready yet.

It has been 9 years and it amazes me that no one has thought of what would happen if you ran pkg delete -af.
It's good to see that at least it doesn't force you to update your base while updating 3rd party packages ... .

If they actually want to design it well it should have it's utility, database, caches, folders and ... isolated away from the 3rd party pkg stuff so that nothing from one side can effect the other.
But it seams like after 9 years PkgBase is still basically the Linux method of slapping vital system packages in the same package
manager that manages 3rd party software and the fun part is that it is gonna get forced on us in few months.
It would be fun to see the horror stories though ... .
 
rbranco said:
I don't fancy them but also don't despise them. Some people like it and I understand the appeal of a live installer where people can try stuff.
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When you say Live installer - you mean like Live boot iso right ? Where you can play with OS from your USB stick without installing it ?
 
rbranco said:
Yes. And the graphical option would let people find out if their graphical card works, etc.
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Oh, see what you mean but by end of the day this would be a waste of resources in my opinion... as with time people would start to demand more and more packages inside of it, then would complain why this is not there but this is there etc.
I better have like it is now than having all that live option. Dont forget, you need to have all the Xorg stuff, maybe Wayland ( demands right ? ) qt or gtk and other stuff ...
Hardware support can tell you what is working/tested and whats not - and im sure people dont choose FreeBSD as their first OS unless they are hardcore in some way like me ( Arch was my first Distro right away :) ) but i already knew what i was choosing and why and probs the reason why FreeBSD was on my list and i ended up switching full time.
 
omardevonlittle said:
  • About KDE as an install option hmm.... It's a bit divisive. My own personal opinion is that the FreeBSD installer on an ISO image should only contain FreeBSD, no external packages. Again, FreeBSD gives you only a barebones OS. Having external packages be included opens the door to have more options and more options. Simplify the setup of FreeBSD at the expense of more developer time being used on things that users should learn on their own (or can read on the manual), and when will it be enough? Until how many optional packages in the installer will it be over? It reminds me of the Debian installer which has had since forever those install options for desktop environments (ticked on by default). Who knows if those options follow best practices or if they are updated, or if they lead to a working system... but that is Debians choice.
  • THIS NEXT SECTION IS ONLY MY OPINION, I AM NOT INFORMED ON THIS TOPIC, THIS MAY EVEN BE FUD OR MISINFORMATION! but I wonder what does KDE get out of this relationship with FreeBSD. Someone wants to manufacture FreeBSD laptops with KDE and sell them... or does FreeBSD want to capture more laptops market share? In that case things have to change in FreeBSD to accomodate that. In exchange KDE gives support for FreeBSD in mobile hardware... and what do they get in return? Money? Sponsorship? Influence over the design of FreeBSD in the future?
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For what I saw and understand the foundation is doing is job, it promotes FreeBSD, seek more found and devs and also want to attract more users which is fine by me unless it's in detriment of the free AND open-sources value (it's FreeBSD and OpenBSD) and the rock solid state of this historical OS. For the KDE option, I have absolutely nothing against it, because it's going to facilitate the access to FreeBSD to a larger public that otherwise wouldn't have access to it, and I Welcome them! Sure the current way of installing FreeBSD is the best to learn FreeBSD, and have direct access to it, but FreeBSD is not just about himself it's about the others too because FreeBSD care for the others. There's not just technical issue in play here but broader social issue at the core of FreeBSD mentality itself, that's what reflect the KDE thing that some have little difficulty to understand and accept, and that's ok too. I just thought that this has to be clarified a bit.
 
GlitchyDot said:
Oh, see what you mean but by end of the day this would be a waste of resources in my opinion... as with time people would start to demand more and more packages inside of it, then would complain why this is not there but this is there etc.
I better have like it is now than having all that live option. Dont forget, you need to have all the Xorg stuff, maybe Wayland ( demands right ? ) qt or gtk and other stuff ...
Hardware support can tell you what is working/tested and whats not - and im sure people dont choose FreeBSD as their first OS unless they are hardcore in some way like me ( Arch was my first Distro right away :) ) but i already knew what i was choosing and why and probs the reason why FreeBSD was on my list and i ended up switching full time.
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This is a pessimistic attitude. For now only the basic KDE is being offered. If other desktops are wanted and there are resources available, then sure, why not?
 
omardevonlittle said:
This next sentence is a little bit baity but, if the KDE people cannot maintain their own KDE distro... what does it say about them?
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That argument had been stocked in my mind, I don't know why, maybe because I do like KDE too much since the beginning. But nevertheless, it made me think that we don't need to worry about KDE in FreeBSD because they have to be up to the level of FreeBSD. It would make absolutely no sense to have an unstable and clunky desktop in FreeBSD. I will admit that there is some bug like everywhere, but it is pretty nice and stable desktop, I wouldn't change, having a standard laptop my second choice would be XFCE, plan b, if KDE mess around I'll be switching to XFCE, which I used in the past on an old laptop with less CPU, and it was like using KDE on good CPU. I had no any major issue with KDE in FreeBSD, since the 5 years I have been using FreeBSD.
 
Uhh, what is wrong with you people? KDE is an option because people expect to be able to use a GUI on their computer. This is now a conspiracy or a bad thing? Options? Hello, ports exists?
 
omardevonlittle said:
This next sentence is a little bit baity but, if the KDE people cannot maintain their own KDE distro... what does it say about them?
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Yeah, that is baity... KDE Neon (AFAICT) is meant to be merely a vehicle to showcase the latest KDE developments, rather than a complete usable distro. KDE e.V.'s priority seems to be on developing a desktop and showcasing it, rather than properly maintaining a whole distro.

[ANALOGY] It's a bit like interior design - yeah, the pics will show a nicely designed kitchen. As for the house the kitchen is in - nobody cares. And if you actually pay a visit to the studio that showcases the kitchen, you'll discover that the showcase was inside a warehouse, and has no proper ceiling or running water. [/ANALOGY]
 
Charlie Brown said:
For what I saw and understand the foundation is doing is job, it promotes FreeBSD
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After thinking it over, I agree with this statement plus what you said in your post. The foundation wants more people to use FreeBSD, and a big marketshare are the people leaving Windows behind, or Linux people who are distrohopping constantly and might make the jump to FreeBSD.
Charlie Brown said:
it made me think that we don't need to worry about KDE in FreeBSD because they have to be up to the level of FreeBSD
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That's hopefully true. Something similar to GhostBSD but on KDE wouldn't make me upset at all. Maybe one time I will try it out or use it on virtual machines :P
astyle said:
KDE Neon (AFAICT) is meant to be merely a vehicle to showcase the latest KDE developments, rather than a complete usable distro
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I guess that's true too. I tend to consider the concept of "Linux" as a single set of common tools (like KDE on Wayland, properly setup constant laptop things like battery or gestures) as well as productivity, but I guess that's wrong. KDE uses this distro to work on the KDE desktop environment and all its dependencies. I use Okular a lot on my FreeBSD workstation. The analogy you thought up is very good :)
 
I have to add that my current BSD set-up reside entirely on an external usb-drive of 1 To of space and everything is running very smooth. Imagine if I was to run it inside like it supposed to be ! In fact, lately I'm thinking of ditching window 10 I began to read some manual pages about the process of deleting this shit out of my life, it's 500 GB of spaces that is just sitting there for nothing I never boot or use windows, and it's plenty for Freebsd.
 
msplsh said:
KDE is an option because people expect to be able to use a GUI on their computer. This is now a conspiracy or a bad thing? Options? Hello, ports exists?
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This will take time from the devs to support this. Yes, ports exist which is what some are arguing--that you have always had the options to install from ports/pkg and this extra button isn't necessary. Also the choice of KDE is being questioned which wastes more time and effort.
 
Yeah, they're taking the time because they want people to use FreeBSD, and what people want is a GUI when they're done installing that acts vaguely like the majority of the desktop computers out there.

If people want to question "why KDE" well then why don't they spend the time volunteering to spin a GNOME install or literally anything. Get on the mailing lists if you think your opinion is that valuable...
 
For me pkg base was something like 10 years ago that seemed exciting to modernize. Since then it’s no longer exciting and or relevant to me to making a good desktop. I’d like to see graphics auto detect just work without downstreams having to make tools.
 
I also don’t find a 15.0 text based desktop installer exciting. I have to try to be positive about the effort which also feels 10 years too late but to me I just see the wrong problems are being solved when there are very obvious ones to solve instead. Like make virtualbox work for 14.3 users instead of when 14.2 goes EOL. Make desktop oriented CI for packages so critical packages for desktop do not disappear from the default repository on upgrades. Things like that.
 
This is where I get cognitive dissonance also. A modern desktop installer cannot be text based with options prompting users to add themselves to video groups or select graphics cards. That is just the opposite of appearing modern.
 
Also I find the freebsd-desktop mailing list hard to follow or something I would want to sign up for because of all the ports information mixed in. It would be nice if there were a purely conversional mailing list for the topic as well as the ports one.
 
vermaden said:
You assume that with switch to PKGBASE You will lose the distinction between FreeBSD Base System and third party packages - and it will be like with yum(8) on RHEL or like with apt(8) in Ubuntu ... IT WILL NOT.
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Just because you say so?

vermaden said:
Its just the Base System instead being 'just a bunch of files' - they will be 'organized' and packed into their pkg(8) compatible packages - and they will be served in a SEPARATE pkg(8) repository.
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How is this not fragmentation?

vermaden said:
... and freebsd-update(8) is far from perfect - HardenedBSD after making the fork from FreeBSD even provided its own not delta based version called hbsd-update(8) instead.

You can not create your own on premise freebsd-update(8) infrastructure and update servers - but you can do that with PKGBASE:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2023/12/09/personal-freebsd-pkgbase-update-server/

The freebsd-update(8) is also VERY interactive which is FAR from ideal for automation or updating large amount of machines or Jails.
Click to expand...
So let's fix freebsd-update(8)?

Fact is, pkgbase will rely on programmer discipline to make sure base does not get fragmented. If there's one thing we're not good at, it's discipline. Look at the example of Windows. Did you notice the difference when Microsoft went from service packs to windows update? When they made updates mandatory?

Freebsd has a tiny fraction of the resources of Microsoft. I'll be very pleasantly surprised if Freebsd doesn't wind up in the same garbage heap of unreliable system updates.
 
To people opposed to pkgbase: why don't you folks play with it, find out what you like, dislike or have questions about and provide some on-point feedback? That will be far more useful than complaining about it here.

[Note: I usually build from sources so I am unaffected by either choice]
 
msplsh said:
Yeah, they're taking the time because they want people to use FreeBSD, and what people want is a GUI when they're done installing that acts vaguely like the majority of the desktop computers out there.
Click to expand...
You can do that now and install almost any desktop Linux has.
msplsh said:
If people want to question "why KDE" well then why don't they spend the time volunteering to spin a GNOME install or literally anything.
Click to expand...
You can install GNOME now.

The point is spending the time to add this to the installer and whatever time/effort is involved in supporting that along with the question of whether KDE will now represent FreeBSD.
 
msplsh said:
Uhh, what is wrong with you people? KDE is an option because people expect to be able to use a GUI on their computer. This is now a conspiracy or a bad thing? Options? Hello, ports exists?
Click to expand...
I think, that it could a second option (xfce, mate or other). Existing things in ports and perfectly stable.
 
fjdlr said:
I think, that it could a second option (xfce, mate or other). Existing things in ports and perfectly stable.
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Follow the links please!
J

Post in thread 'FreeBSD Foundation Flounders on 15 with Rust, pkgbase, and KDE'

> X window mgr

There is no default. I could be totally wrong but since words typically have meanings, I try to follow the links first.

1. https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundatio...dates/2025-06.md#kde-desktop-installer-option
2. https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop/issues/25

Which leads you to:
"alfonsosiciliano has some work already started here: [3.] https://gitlab.com/alfix/desktopconfig"

From which you can view some Proof-of-concept code which has a few entries like: KDE, Gnome, and XFCE (seems like a nice start).
4...
  • Thanks
 
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