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

Gyros Komplett said:
Well, actually, I can't remember any problems related to package based installs in two and a half decades using Linux.
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You never had a Gentoo "emerge" go wrong? So, so wrong, that no amount of emerge @everything --ripley-mode --and-I-mean-it --yes-really-everthing --no-I-really-mean-it-this-time --please --pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top --scorched-earth --potentially-useless-option-the-docs-are-unclear would fix it?
 
LibreQuest said:
Woah! Epic graphical installer. I can dig it. https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-w...sed-edition/networking-3/installer-usability/
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Didn't see the Epic installer on that page. I scanned it, and was disappointed. It looks at the evolution of the Windows installers for inspiration. There's a reason why Windows needs a semi-friendly installer. Like Linux, its upgrades often result in a completely b0rked system, and the only recovery is full system re-installation.

One of the great strengths of Freebsd has been seamless upgrades. I have never had to re-install Freebsd on any machine, some of which have been running for years. I've moved disks to new hardware with 0 problems. Unfortunately, it looks like enshittification has finally come for one of my favorite operating systems 😞

Beastie7 said:
Slander of the FreeBSD Foundation is enough to get this nonsense deleted IMO. I'm all for it.
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The day criticism of the Foundation is forbidden here is the last day I visit this forum.
 
Jose said:
One of the great strengths of Freebsd has been seamless upgrades. I have never had to re-install Freebsd on any machine, some of whom have been running for years. I've moved disks to new hardware with 0 problems.
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I once had a 5.0-RELEASE system that I used all the way up to 12.2-RELEASE by means of upgrades. The only reason I rebuilt it was to move from i386 to X86_64. I'm sure there was probably a way to do an in-place migration, but I figured... it was time to start fresh.
 
This graphical installer looks WAY too heavy for the simple 640x480 16-color VGA graphics like some of my servers use. Hopefully this new installer is optional. It's also dissapointing how they are following Ubuntu of all things. Ubuntu is a proprietary and bloated mess. I say that (proprietary) because of all of the proprietary SaaSS crap in it.
 
Jose said:
The day criticism of the Foundation is forbidden here is the last day I visit this forum.
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Slander =/= Criticism

What's one less ungrateful user?

LibreQuest said:
Woah! Epic graphical installer. I can dig it. https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-w...sed-edition/networking-3/installer-usability/
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Wait a minute.. they're proposing KDE an as option. But the GUI installer is written in GTK? Why? 🤦‍♂️

I think the Ubuntu Server ncurses installer is good enough for a modern UX; just add FreeBSD color accents and you're done.
 
I assume the graphical installer is optional. It looks so nice. And the proposed package selection in the graphical installer is fantastic as well. But optional is also great. I think it's very very nicely done from the screen captures at the bottom of the article.
 
Jose said:
The day criticism of the Foundation is forbidden here is the last day I visit this forum.
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While there's a lot that would warrant not coming back to a forum, that would be a mistake on the user's part.

No organization wants damaging criticism towards it, and most organizations would act the same in regards to that. Positive criticism of an organization, maybe, it depends.

Criticizing decisions of an organization is different. Good organizations need positive or neutral criticism of their actions to help it. Then Again, it can fall into the rule of: don't ask why FreeBSD isn't like that other OS and similar. I take it, people who comment here a lot about FreeBSD because they are fans of FreeBSD.
Beastie7 said:
Slander =/= Criticism
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No organization will tolerate that.
Jose said:
"Slander" is often just unwelcome criticism.
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It means things which aren't true to damage a reputation.

This thread is going downhill, for this insistence, and is going to upset people and mess this up.
 
Jose said:
Argh! If ever there was a Linux-inspired move...
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Quoting the article:
Being already familiar with Gtk+, I considered it a reasonable trade-off if only to come up with a working demonstrator. Gtk+ is available under the LGPL license, which is still not enough a match for the target demographics.
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Which I take to mean that the finished tool is unlikely to be written in GTK+, this is just a proof of concept.
 
Gyros Komplett said:
No. I dont't understand how this could even be possible.
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Minor updates in Debian (the digit after the period) usually work, but not always.

I've tried major version updates (the digits before the period) I think 3 times. Every single time the upgrade fails, and the system is unusable afterwards. Since I use Debian mostly on RPi now, I have a new strategy: I have spare SD cards, I reinstall the new major version from scratch on a spare RPi on my lab bench, clone the SD card multiple times, and then customize each SD card for the machine in question (they are not all configured identically), then do the "OS upgrade" by swapping the whole SD card in the machine. It's painful, and takes about a day or two of work for 4 computers, but it is reliable and I know I'll have a working system for nearly all the time (maybe except 15 minutes for swapping).

On FreeBSD, I do both major and minor version upgrades on the live system, because I expect them to be 100% reliable. The transition to pkgbase in 15 is the first time I'll have to do a dry run of the FreeBSD upgrade. The last time I did a new install is when i386 became deprecated (fortunately, my hardware could be installed in 64-bit mode).
 
Debian can also get into messes when third-party repositories are added to apt. Which is not an uncommon way to distribute software binaries to Debian, unfortunately.
 
The latest Debian installer includes an option to vote for a new package management system, which makes me think the distribution may be looking to integrate something like Flatpak or AppImage for package management.

If the FreeBSD Foundation decides to follow the APT path, I suspect that at some point it will face a similar challenge to what Debian is going through with the adoption of Flatpak and AppImage.

IMHO the most important step at the moment is to make more hardware(wireless and gpu specifically) available and keep improving freebsd-update with pkg as is for now.
 
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