What would you like to see in FreeBSD

Hello,

Just to point out that a great deal of desktop setup can be done with a metaport. That would be just one big port that depends on X, a desktop manager, and any other packages that are desired to be included. Local modifications can be included in the metaport's files directory, and even scripts that set preferred defaults.

wblock@, thanks for this hint, it shows me, that also FreeBSD can be handled a little bit more easy.

I've written that I now want to concentrate on solving an issue with qt4 and k3b. I don't want to start a dispute but some comments for clarification:
Maybe some people here have misunderstand my whish, that some things for using FreeBSD on a desktop system should "not so complicated for users, who are not professionals". I don't write this as a beginner, who comes from MS Windows and expect, that all things should be worked with using GUI administration tools and a lot of automatism.

And "not so complicated" does not mean "not so difficult to understand" for me, I've not a problem with understanding the terminal output after installing k3b on FreeBSD. But to handle a lot of config files with an editor and doing a stupid copy&paste from that output after installation of a simple desktop software like k3b has nothing to do with "learning about an operating system", it only wastes my time with no learning effect. I can spend this time for learning things like tex and latex or better, for making a picknick with my wife. Apart from that: A friend of me works as unix administator for a big company in Germany, it is a fulltime job. He's familar with several unix stuff like solaris, linux and so on. He's able to setup stuff manually but also like tools for administration which saves time.

What is a professional for you? I'm able to setup a NAS with Debian GNU/Linux with nfs shares, cups as printserver, modifying some config stuff in /etc for needs of my wife and me and I need only an hour for it. I'm very familar with Debian GNU/Linux but I'm not a professional. But people like wblock@ or roddierod don't disagree my argumentation but makes supplements to it. wblock@ is admin and developer, roddierod is familar with BSD since 1998 and a programmer - interesting, I would call this two people professionals.

Dies_Irae:
Why do you take this personally? The word "you" in my post was not aimed at *you* personally, but to any generic FreeBSD user.
I don't take this personally, but it was written by you refering to my argumentation, or wasn't it? And I disagree ANOKNUSA's explanation, I get the impression, that some people here don't know about an important thing for developement of a society called "division of labor": Johann Sebastian Bach was on of the greatest organists, he also was able to judge new organs and perhaps he also was able to tune up organs but reparing a damage was job for people like Gottfried Silbermann. And to create tools for reparing wasn't job for Silbermann, it was job for a toolmaker. This is called division of labor.

I swear it's like the migration crisis in these forums lately. Big ol' Red Hat is evil, so all the refugees are flocking to BSD-land expecting to get the same environment.
Beastie7: If this refers to people like me, do you belive I'm a refugee and I want to replace GNU/Linux with FreeBSD? Why should I replace an unix based operation system which is free software, which is installable on several filesystems, which offers me a big fundus of current free software stuff, which is excellent documentated with up-to-date articles, which allows me to participate in current developement of plasma5 and kf5 stuff and which supports a lot of hardware like printers, wlan cards, soundcards, graphic cards, which offers me a lot of different possibilities of installation and administration (Arch with its KISS conception, Debian with a rock stable packagemanagement, openSUSE with GUI tool YaST) and which I can use for my needs as a user of a desktop system? I've started to use FreeBSD because I want to get to know a further unix based operating system, I want to find out, if I can work with FreeBSD on desktop like with a GNU/Linux without intention to replace Linux with FreeBSD.

And my first impressions are good, apart from using k3b or soundkonverter because of a qt4 bug.

Kind regards,
Holger
 
People wanting to use FreeBSD and have it automatically configured for desktop should take a look at sysutils/desktop-installer.

Hello pkubaj,

thank you for this hint.

But now I'm a little bit surprised: I whish that some things refering to configure FreeBSD as desktop system should be not so complicated for non-professionals, some people here disagree with me, write extensive explanations, why FreeBSD is not made for such needs I whish, FreeBSD could lost its quality, and now I see, that FreeBSD is also made for such needs with offering an installer for users who want to setup FreeBSD as desktop system and makes things more easy with some automatical configuration.

Kind regards,
Holger
 
Because pkg(8) would then also need to undo those changes for you, and now we're getting into more complex territory. You, the user, are empowered to make those changes on your own, and in the process you become informed precisely how your system is being crafted and configured, making it easier to maintain. This is precisely where the asinine debate over the ever-mythical "perfect desktop OS" falls on my eminently deaf ears: what people are arguing for is willful ignorance. FreeBSD is not a magic lamp, it's a minimal toolbox. Users who want something else should choose any of the numerous "something else's" that are already available.

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/pkg-deinstall.html

I'm not suggesting that FreeBSD be "the perfect desktop OS" or that it magically do all this desktop setup on initial system install.

What I am saying is that if you install a port that is obviously a desktop user port (such as k3b) it runs a script that actually configures the system so the port is usable?

And if the maintainer of the port creates and install script...then he should also create a deinstall script.

And yes, I have maintained ports.
 
Just to point out that a great deal of desktop setup can be done with a metaport. That would be just one big port that depends on X, a desktop manager, and any other packages that are desired to be included. Local modifications can be included in the metaport's files directory, and even scripts that set preferred defaults.

This is what I am getting at basically. Back in the day, Grog had a port called instant-desktop, I recall it was based on window maker, but something like that seems like it can be useful again.
 
Yes. A desktop setup metaport would not be out of bounds to do specific application setup. Individual application ports can't really do that. For example, a user installing Firefox might be surprised to find that it has been configured to immediately switch to new tabs, since the (stupid) default is to open new tabs in the background. If they installed WBlock's Super XFCE Desktop Ultra-Mega Port (now with 28% more greatness!), such customizations could be expected.
 
I don't take this personally, but it was written by you refering to my argumentation, or wasn't it?
No, I have simply taken your post as a starting point to express my opinions about this thread topic: "What would you like to see in FreeBSD". You said that FreeBSD should be easier to non-professional users, and I simply replied: "I disagree." and I explained why. I've just expressed my opinions which, in this case, are different from yours. I don't know how to be more polite than that without sacrificing my opinions. Maybe offering you a beer... :beer:
 
No, I have simply taken your post as a starting point to express my opinions about this thread topic: "What would you like to see in freebsd". You said that FreeBSD should be easier to non-professional users, and I simply replied: "I disagree." and I explained why. I've just expressed my opinions which, in this case, are different from yours. I don't know how to be more polite than that without sacrificing my opinions. Maybe offering you a beer... :beer:

I would prefer a glas of white wine, thanks :D

Maybe some misunderstanding - if something is written with factual intention to clarify or more with intention to depreciate the needs of another person - also has to do with, that I'm coming from Germany and not an native speaker of english language. IMHO english is not a problem for me and I hope, I've written in a kind of way without insulting anyone here. It seems, that I've understood your intention and maybe also intention of Beastie7 in a wrong way.

Kind regards,
Holger
 
Stop here. We are off-topic, and I hear the moderators coming... :D
Yes, someone mentioned adult beverages. So it is a sure thing they turn up rather sooner than later. I'll have the 20 year old scotch, please. No ice. ;)
 
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I respectfully disagree with you. Idea of postinstall scripts and starting daemons after software installation which I believe comes from Debian kitchen is beyond dumb. It is adopted by Ubuntu. I am not sure what OpenSUSE and Arch are doing but they are irrelevant here in U.S.

Post install scripts may be a bad idea and I respect your opinion on that, but a text file or link to instructions would be appropriate rather than something which flies by at install time and cannot be found again. I just gave up on K3B and started to use the command line instead, but some people may like to use K3B nevertheless and if it's to be offered, then I think it should be offered transparently for what it is and not as some cryptic surprise.

As for U.S. being set apart from open source, I must say you have me wondering what you're talking about there.
 
Post install scripts may be a bad idea and I respect your opinion on that, but a text file or link to instructions would be appropriate rather than something which flies by at install time and cannot be found again. I just gave up on K3B and started to use the command line instead, but some people may like to use K3B nevertheless and if it's to be offered, then I think it should be offered transparently for what it is and not as some cryptic surprise.

As for U.S. being set apart from open source, I must say you have me wondering what you're talking about there.

Hello,

Please also look here: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/...ter-for-handling-optical-media-crashes.53259/

Even if k3b installation is successful there seems to be a bug with current qt4 in FreeBSD 10.2. I'll try to find out a solution with help of member talsamon.

Sorry for this off-topic comment.

Kind regards,
Holger
 
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Even if k3b installation is successful there seems to be a bug with current qt4 in FreeBSD 10.2. I'll try to find out a solution with help of member talsamon.

Sorry for this off-topic comment.

It's not too far off, but it would fit perfectly in this recent thread. I've personally said goodbye to K3B because the command line is, quite frankly, easier anyway. But I do think that since many people have (perhaps false) expectations about K3B that it is worth while putting the instructions in the Handbook like there is with other key desktop components like browsers, or just not having it available at all.
 
... rather than something which flies by at install time and cannot be found again.
I can be found again, easily. Like this:
Code:
tingo@kg-core1$ pkg info --pkg-message firefox-40.0.3,1
firefox-40.0.3,1:
======================================================================

smb:// issues (Gvfs/GIO option):
Network group, machine, and share browsing does not work correctly.

sftp:// (Gvfs/GIO option):
Only sftp access using public key authentication works.  To easily
setup public key authentication to "remote_host":
(cut for brevity).
HTH
 
Hey thanks Torfinn. I was talking about K3B which requires considerable setup in order to work, but yes there is a pkg-message file with that one too, and it has the relevant information. Until you pointed it out, I didn't know that was where the post-compile/install message was located.
 
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802.11 ac

This seems to me important and urgent as FreeBSD can often be used as a Gateway/Proxy. The ability of handling such protocol would be a booster for those who are building wireless AP/Gateway.

I think that Bluetooth may take in the future more and more importance as this protocol has made great progresses with BT3/BT4... but if only *BSD want to keep on being an acceptable desktop alternative to Linux.

Tablet and Ultrabook have now very few USB port, so to keep these precious ports free, more and more customer who want to connect an external keyboard /mouse will be forced to choose Bluetooh devices.

Bluetooth can now connect with more than acceptable quality to audio with APTX, there are some devices working under bluetooth as some GPS. For mobile devices Bluetooth is very perfect to initiate occasional data exchanges with some servers/workstation without the need to give the PSK key to auhorize a Wifi connection.

Perhaps should we expect in the future something from PC-BSD as I am afraid that FreeBSD and the other will never prioritize this.
 
Is that a discussion some members did want to put on developers but they are refusing to participate?

I don't understand that question. One developer, adrian@, started a thread on reddit asking for suggestions. Reading more into it than that is probably a mistake.
 
The forums are here to help people use FreeBSD. So are the mailing lists. The mailing lists have been around much longer, and long-time users and developers usually joined them first. The current result is that most developers are still on the mailing lists, but we are seeing more developers here as time goes on.
 
8. I like the fact that developers are talking about better NTP daemon. Please do it. I would like to see an alternative to OpenNTPD (or NTP bloat-ware) This actually could be much higher on my list.

Mr. Poul-Henning Kamp is working hard on Ntimed - a new replacement to NTPd. You can follow the progress at: http://phk.freebsd.dk/time/index.html

At FOSDEM 2015; PHK was giving a speech about It.
Slides and video are available:
https://archive.fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/ntimed_ntpd_replacement/
 
Xombrero is not affiliated in any shape or form with OpenBSD project and has not being affiliated even when Marco was developer. His tiling window manager spectrwm formerly known as scrotwm manager has been removed from the base at the time of Marco's departure as a developer. However his code still lives in OpenBSD in particularly anything storage related (Hardware RAID drivers, controllers and similar).

Ah, OK... looks like my knowledge of Web Browsers is a bit rusty (not much worse than my knowledge on OpenBSD).

I think oss is the default on FreeBSD, isn't it?

In the operating system? Yes. The sound system uses the OSS API (it was rewritten a few times, so it's not really the old OSS though).
OpenBSD has sndio, I believe it also uses the OSS API.

PC-BSD did something... odd, and they integrated Pulseaudio into the system mixer, because... Skype. I can't argue about the end product's usability but I hate that, having a sane sound system, they chose to go that route just to improve compatibility for a few things.

This is my wishlist for 11.0.
It may not be entirely realistic, but hey, it's a wishlist:

1) Integrate the ASLR patches.
2) Get i915 driver up to speed with Linux.
3) Finish removing Sendmail and replace it with DMA (AFAIK, DMA has been imported, but someone has to call the shots).
4) Get PF up to date with OpenBSD.
5) Remove IPF (provided it's not being used anymore).
6) Completely remove the GNU toolchain and replace it with ELF Toolchain.
7) Bring in LLDB as the default debugger.
8) Make SSL in base private (there is a patch for this, though I don't know the status).
9) Replace OpenSSL in base with the most recent version of LibreSSL.
10) Complete the Optimus port.
11) Finish porting Wayland (actually it's been ported, not tested, but as of today it is unusable).
12) This one is just a joke, but NetBSD's BSOD installer also looks nice ( https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/install-5.0/inst-language.png ).

That's what I'd like to see in 11.0. Many of the graphics related things (like the Wayland port) are going to need more people involved, since as of now there is only one person doing all the work regarding the i915 driver and the evdev port was made during this year’s GSOC.
 
I would love to see header lines in output of some commands, describing what the column stands for. Good examples are:
ps
netstat -i
w

but is missing here, for example:
who
ipfw show
 
In the operating system? Yes. The sound system uses the OSS API (it was rewritten a few times, so it's not really the old OSS though).
OpenBSD has sndio, I believe it also uses the OSS API.

OpenBSD like all UNIX-es (Solaris comes to mind) uses OSS. sndio is OpenBSD audio server which for example allows you to listen the music while watching the movie (if you mentally can handle that).

5) Remove IPF (provided it's not being used anymore).
Juniper networks have vetoed. So the secret is out. JunoOS is actually using IPF.


12) This one is just a joke, but NetBSD's BSOD installer also looks nice ( https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/install-5.0/inst-language.png ).
I just tried recently when 7.0 was released. I am not impressed at all neither with the installer nor with NetBSD. Just as a side note it would take so much work to adopt that installer to installations to ZFS pools that practically mean writing things from scratch.
 
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