Hello out there!
Thank you, Chris, for your answer! And thank you Graham for the nice comment to my previous and very 1st post here!
christhegreek said:
I'm using Linux since 1999 the last 2-3 years i'm using FreeBSD because FreeBSD is the Linux of 2021 and it has less crap and less shit means less problems.
Its more stable than linux (on some apps im using) compared to the previous linux distros i was using and i like it more.
Yes, indeed! I quite concur with this. If you have some time for reading long prose, you may want to have a look at these two posts o' mine:
the reasons why I got interested in FreeBSD
in which I mention CultBSD.
asking "Where 'Take Refuge'?" on the Obarun (linux) forum
where I draw audacious analogies between Unix and the Dharma!
To reformulate the long story short, in Buddhism (all schools of Buddhism! --except, maybe, the Zen ones), it is considered that the "Refuge" (Shelter) is three-fold:
-
Buddha himself, ie the fully enlightened one
- the
Dharma, ie the law, the right doctrine, the correct teachings
- the
Sangha, ie the community of the devotees who are more advanced on the path
The analogical transposition I draw, for computing, is roughly as follows:
- the
Enlightenment is: a way of computing where computers liberate the user instead of enslaving the user
(which might be "the Unix way" for the OS and the "KISS" principles for both the OS and the applications running on it? And more generally code-correctness!)
- the
Dharma: is a correct reference documentation --"
RTFM!"
-- it goes for both software AND hardware too: documented specifications (on the hardware side, we are very far from it! That is why and where Richard Stallman begun his fight!
- the
Sangha is: the Community of advanced users --and the help they provide to each other and to less advanced users
Now, in a very general way: (ALL) SOFTWARE SUCKS! But some software suck more than others, and some suck less.
Linux-wise,
systemd sucks and the linux
kernel sucks: it's become a bloat. (In this regard, the BSD way seems much better to me.)
Unix-wide-wise, there is something that sucks indeed all over the place, it is the
X-server!
(That is one of the reasons I wish I had the courage and expertise to give OpenBSD a try: they have the Xenocara project. --I don't know how good it is. But at least they try something else.)
christhegreek said:
PS1: Best is the enemy of the good.
As far as I know, it's a quote from my compatriot Voltaire. Beware: he was very far from the nice guy he is often told he was...
christhegreek said:
I like also LxQT with kvantum ,picom with backends and dual-kawase and the qt applications gives a consistent and cool theme on all applications.
I have not tried yet the v1.0 of LXQt --I run LXQt on Devuan Daedalus, where the version is still old v0.16. I can't wait to see how the version 1.0 is and behaves. It took them something like a decade to reach it. And the LXQt project, which is very humble on the public relations side, is actually pretty ambitious on the deed side.
By the way,
PCManFM is one of the coolest file-managers I know of, even better than Dolphin in at least one regard: it "folders" applications and lets you launch them from the very FM,
à la Mac OS X Finder. Which may be one of the reasons why it is the file-manager that helloSystem uses --or bases its (home?) file-manager on, not sure about this.
And when you consider (as still do many of us, ie everybody except the Gnome3 fanboys) that the desktop metaphor is still the best one to do actual stuff, a
good (feature-rich yet simple)
graphical file-manager is absolutely CORE to the experience and work-flow!!!
More digressions on
file-management:
I have been a (reluctant) user of MS-Windows from 1994 to 2007. Among many other flaws, I was always amazed by the dumbness of Windows
Explorer. (Even today, the MS devs have not yet managed to get it right!)
Much later, in 2016-2017, I have had a second-hand (Intel) 2008 Macbook. The highest version of Mac OS X that I could run on it was 10.6, which was okay because Snow Leopard was one of the best versions of Apple's OS, as far as I know. I liked it much. Yet, there were several (basic) features that were missing for me (who had already been running Linux nine years) in the
Finder. One of them was the possibility to create an empty file. (!) Can you believe this? In Apple's 2009 OS, you just could not create an empty file in the Finder!... unless you would download and add a script, published by another Mac user, which was sort of a graphical front-end for command
touch!?! (And that's what I did: I installed this unofficial "add-on" to my Finder!) And yet, it was not very ergonomic because you still had to
use the mouse to click on an ugly button, instead of a
keybind.
By the way, even in today (Plasma)
Dolphin, there is
no native keybind to create an empty file (and no way that I found to set one), which is tremendously stupid! (It is possible to create an empty text-file via the context menu. But then, even empty, it results NOT a 0 byte file, go figure why!) Consequence: I often run
touch from the shell... (And when I say often, I do mean: several times a day.) Which is not a big issue for me, since I like to spend time with the Fish shell in Konsole. Nevertheless, UX-wise, it remains quite a mistake!
Now...
to CultBSD!
Just a question, not a complain. When I run my first CultBSD live-session, a few days ago, I was eager to know how it would behave with the
wireless (all good, sir!), with the screen
resolution (all good, sir!) and also with the management of "
volumes". On the latter, Plasma "sees" the volumes (say, a FAT32 USB-pendrive with personal data), and proposes to mount and open them, and then... fails to do so.
For having tried (also live) user-friendly GhostBSD a week before, and having noticed there is
no auto-mount, and having performed a research on forums, I know that the user has to mount volumes using command line.
Still, I am curious to know if, in CultBSD, that is an intentional "feature" (due to your respect of FreeBSD policy of not auto-mounting volumes), --or a "bug", ie something you forgot (or failed) to fix?
christhegreek said:
My only problem was that i need to make it smaller in size so i will focus in that and on the creation of the CultBSD builder script.
Unless your attempt to "make it smaller" has something to do with the frugality and speed of booting and running, I personally think the
size is not an issue per se.
Yesterday, I went to the next city to make some hardware shopping, in "real life" stores. (I am in France, the situation I am about to describe may be different in other countries.) A few years ago, I had noticed that it was already impossible to purchase a 2GB USB pen-drive (very handy to try most of ISOs out there) and even a 4GB one. Now, it has just become impossible to purchase an 8GB USB-key! The minimum you can buy in a shop is 16GB! (And yet, they are rarely USB 3 capable, go figure!)
christhegreek said:
I wanted to move this project to be done differently but i'm not sure if its good to create another project and name for that, and i have to make a new sourceforge account and youtube channel and blog but i will keep the name and i will still make new releases with the old cultbsd way and i will work on the CultBSD builder script along with that.
I was about to move this project to another that everything would be done with a script but i decided to continue and start work on the builder along.
What you call "the old CultBSD way", is it, for instance, the live-iso I have tried, namely
cultbsd-alpha1-thesupreme.img?
About this very system, I have a few questions.
Let's say I want to install this system on a 64-bit CPU laptop (in case you want to know: Dell Latitude D630)...
A. Can I expect the hard-installed system to behave approximately like the one I run live?
B. Will there be updates? More precisely, will there be (security) updates for 1. the FreeBSD base; 2. the Plasma desktop; 3. the other third-party applications?
C. Will there also be version upgrades of these three different types of software components?
(Sorry for yet another Linuxian reference here on the FreeBSD forum, it's just aimed at clarifying my question.) You may have heard about the
KDE Neon distro. Although based on Ubuntu LTS, it proposes the last Plasma experience, continuously upgraded. With CultBSD the Supreme, can I expect the FreeBSD 13 upgrading to future point releases (13.1, 13.2, etc)? And, in both cases (yes/no), can I expect the Plasma desktop upgrading, independently?
(Here again, just asking!)
christhegreek said:
I wanted to create a FreeBSD project that has the WoW factor you can find on some Linux distros like Garuda Linux etc this project gives priority also to the portable usability so it would be usable on a usb flash stick and you can use it on other computers without changing anything. Also the installer doubles as a cloner if you just enter your current installed system username and password.
Without meaning to flatter, and as far as I have glimpsed of it --remember: I have NOT installed CultBSD on real hardware yet--, the
Wow factor is already there, dude!
I have not tried yet this functionality (and hence cannot give user feedback), but if you really manage to propose a viable feature that lets the user create a bootable image of the system, as s/he has customized it after installation, that would be more than great: AWESOME!
One big and decisive "plus" in the "wow factor" would be the integration of
persistence for the user preferences AND data --on a separate partition, maybe? A bit in the same manner as what NomadBSD proposes. (A great project too, by the way!)
Speaking of which, it reminds me to ask: what are the
filesystems that the CultBSD installer is able to partition to?
(If my memory serves well, the NomadBSD installer can perform UFS and XFS partitioning, defaulting on
XFS. --But I might be wrong with UFS, maybe it's ZFS?)
christhegreek said:
I had some plans ahead and i remove this project for that but i think i will work on both project with the same name CultBSD.
Although I quite dislike reddit --that's one of the reasons I write here, and also one of the reasons why I do not stick with Void Linux (they do not have a real forum, just some stupid reddit thread!)--, I have seen on reddit an announcement for a
highly experimental CultBSD based on FreeBSD 14. Have I been daydreaming or is that a fact? Is it what you are refering to?
If you do wish to manage several projects simultaneously --see what I think about it below--, then, you should care for legibility. Use, if not different names, at least different codenames. (It seems you already do, don't you? I've seen "codename: UFO" somewhere.)
Now about what I think about running several projects at a time: BEWARE! You know yourself better than anyone, and that's for you to know. But beware nonetheless. As far as I know, you are alone to run this crazy ambitious project. You need to rest sometimes. You need to live. Consequently, you also need to focus, so that this project leaves you free time to enjoy your life.
It seems there are here quite a bunch of nice persons ready to provide help, feedback, advise and so on. --Thanks to all of them, by the way!!!
Nevertheless, CultBSD is YOUR baby, right?
Are you ready to bear twin babies... alone?
If I was you (but I'm not!), I would try to make ONE thing really right instead of several half right.
By the way, it's on
RoboNuggie Youtube channel that I heard about CultBSD the first time. When he shot his video, CultBSD was running MATE desktop, right? You have moved it to Plasma since. And I think this is a very clever move, for several reasons.
1. I think Plasma is now much better than MATE --and I have run both.
2. MATE is the default and flagship desktop of
GhostBSD, and you don't want to compete with another FreeBSD-based graphical and live-capable system that has been around for so long, do you?
3. The very existence of a (Plasma) CultBSD can bring some
other new users to FreeBSD. And a real solid bunch of them!
4. Unlike NomadBSD (with OpenBox), CultBSD might become something HUGE! NomadBSD is a project I have much respect for. (It is the first FreeBSD-based OS user-friendly enough to convince the end-user I am install it on his computer! That's already quite something...) But I fear that NomadBSD,
as is, will remain a niche system. Quite an opposite way, a convincing
Plasma-focused FreeBSD-based system can possibly become a GAME-CHANGER. Plasma is not just a desktop. As of today, it has become (again)
THE desktop. (Partly thanks to its own intrinsic merits, partly because of the many flaws of the other desktops.) I am all the more convinced of this, that, at the very exception of Devuan on a 32-bit laptop, ALL the (Linux) distros that I have tried and installed for a year are
Plasma-centric. One of them being
KaOS (the most Plasma-centric of them all), a distro I wanted to try for some time
despite the (very ennoying) fact that it's a distro
with systemd! I have much liked it and even installed it. --And it is this very system I am about to delete to install CultBSD instead.
Which also reminds me to come to another feedback/question. I have noticed that you managed (quite well) to have the
Plasma panel behave a bit like Mac OS X system menu (or panel, or whatever its name): when an application is opened, the left side of the panel holds the application menu. Well done!
Especially for a laptop user: that's all the more space regained for the application window to view actual content. (It was one of the reasons Unity also made this UX choice back in the days.)
Unfortunately, it doesn't work with
Firefox. I have tried to install the browser Plasma-integration add-on (available from mozilla) but it wasn't sufficient. Does it work if/once the Plasma-integration
package is installed too?
(That's just a detail. But the kind of detail of consistency which, once fixed, will really make people say: WOW!!!)
I think you already know most of what I've just said. But I also think that it may not be useless for you to hear from a mere end-user like me.
All that being said, thanks again for the awesome good job, Chris, also thanks in advance for any further answers to my end-user newbie questions, and see you around soon in the cyberspace!
Take good care of yourself,
O.
