what's real stage of freebsd now? a weird article.
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distrowatch.com
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 DistroWatch Weekly
[td width="933.401px"] Feature Story (By Jesse Smith) |
FreeBSD 15.1 with an install-time desktop While the switch from distribution sets to the pkgbase approach to managing the software in the core operating system did show up in FreeBSD 15.0, and it did work as expected, there was no sign of an option to install a desktop environment from the system installer. With some poking around, I finally found that the project had delayed the desktop option until FreeBSD 15.1, in order to work out some final issues. Eager to test drive the pre-configured desktop, I downloaded the full DVD build of FreeBSD 15.1 for x86_64 machines. This file is 4.3GB in size. Booting from the provided disc image brings up a text prompt offering to run the system installer, open a shell, or run a live system. Unlike Linux distributions, which usually supply a desktop environment in their "live" environments, FreeBSD does not. Instead we are presented with a login shell where we can sign into the system using the root account and no password. This gives us a chance to inspect the system, perform data recovery, or manage partitions. Installing The system installer provides a series of text-based menus where we are prompted with questions and can select our answers from lists or type responses in a box. The installer quickly walks us through choosing our keyboard layout and making up a hostname. We are given the choice of using classic package sets or the modern pkgbase approach to software management. I chose pkgbase. Then I was asked if I wanted to fetch software from on-line repositories or use packages on the local ISO. I chose to use the local media. The installer then asks if we want to use automated ZFS, automated UFS, or manual disk partitioning. We are asked which operating system features we want to install, with options including the base system, development tools, the OS source code, test code, and extras. The selected packages installed and then I was asked to make up a root password, confirm my timezone, and set the system clock. I was asked which background services to run, such as network time sync, and secure shell. One of my favourite features of FreeBSD is an option to enable extra security at install time. We can check features we want to enable from a list and these items include features such as hiding processes from other users, assigning random PIDs, and cleaning the /tmp directory upon each boot. The final option asks if we would like to create regular user accounts. Then the system installer offers to reboot the computer. The whole process took me under ten minutes and, to my surprise, at no point was I asked if I wanted to install a desktop environment. Wondering if I'd missed an option, I went through the installer more deliberately. This time I chose to download packages from the on-line repositories, thinking that might open up the option of fetching desktop packages. Fetching packages from remote repositories made the install process slightly slower, but otherwise it worked exactly the same. Ten minutes later, I booted into my (second) new copy of FreeBSD 15.1 and again discovered there was no desktop installed. There was no first-run wizard or tool for enabling a desktop either. Searching for answers From here on this article shifts from an exploration of the technical elements of FreeBSD into a quest for information. I was tempted to simply abandon the experiment and move on to something else, but the more time I spent looking for information about FreeBSD's desktop installer the more I felt sharing this journey was important. Someone commented recently: "When Jesse expresses puzzlement or disappointment or joy or pleasantness or boredom (my favorite) with a distro or some aspect of a distro then my ears perk up and I read on." What follows is largely written for them. After two passes through the FreeBSD system installer and not seeing any obvious way to enable a desktop environment, I went back and re-read the release announcement and release notes for FreeBSD 15.1. While some work has been done to improve the experience of running FreeBSD on laptop computers, and to improve the overall desktop experience, there wasn't any specific information about setting up a desktop environment at install time. I also didn't find any indication the feature had been dropped from 15.1. There was mention of following instructions in the Handbook to get a new system installed. I checked the FreeBSD Handbook, which is always a good first-stop for information, and again did not find anything specific to setting up a pre-configured desktop. This lack of information about how to set up a new desktop system (or what had happened to the desktop-at-install-time feature) puzzled me because, by the time FreeBSD 15.1 was officially released, there had already been multiple blog posts and reviews about it and about its new install-time desktop option. I read multiple posts from authors who claimed FreeBSD 15.1 included the feature and wrote that it provided a working KDE Plasma environment post-install. Some even posted screenshots of the installer setting up Plasma packages. So I began to wonder what I was missing. I went back and revisited some of those articles and posts. One review, on the Sacred Heart blog, began by mentioning the latest version of FreeBSD works quite well as a desktop system. The blog post mentions some of the improvements for desktop users in 15.1 and includes a screenshot of Plasma working. Though, when I read through to the end of the post, I found (about two-thirds of the way through) that the author says they had to install all their Plasma packages manually. So their system wasn't set up as a desktop out of the box, they just managed to turn it into a desktop system. That review, if perhaps a touch misleading at first, was honest. Other reviews, I began to suspect, were fabrications. Upon revisiting them I started to notice two things. The first was that comments about FreeBSD's new desktop-at-install-time feature all sounded the same, the way news reporters do when they are all trying to put their own spin on a press release. Or the way a large language model (LLM) will rewrite an article, putting a new spin on saying the same information in a similar way. I also noticed the posts with screenshots were, in a word, wrong. I had just installed FreeBSD 15.1 multiple times, trying different options, and was freshly aware of how the system installer looked. The screenshots didn't match.  FreeBSD 15.1 -- The system installer on Jesse's computer (full image size: 9kB, resolution: 720x400 pixels)  Screenshot presented on other review websites (full image size: 94kB, resolution: 800x527 pixels) As you can see in these screenshots, the background is not the same shade of blue. In the screenshot of FreeBSD 15.1, the bar at the top of the screen is blue and dotted. In the other articles' screenshot the line is green and solid. The text "FreeBSD Installer" is also a different colour. My suspicions about the legitimacy of the content grew when I noticed multiple articles were using the same screenshot, where the colours and lines didn't match my experience. It seemed likely these articles were generated by LLMs, perhaps using a common source. I performed a test, asking ChatGPT: "Does FreeBSD 15.1 include a system installer option to install the Plasma desktop?" The chatbot reported back with false information: This is a good plan, though it leaves a cold trail. There isn't any original source or link to the report from where the message was copied. It also doesn't specifically mention the desktop feature, only the way NVIDIA video drivers are being handled. In short, we can infer this means the desktop enabling feature was postponed, but the report doesn't mention it by name, it just refers to a related driver feature. Ironically, I did eventually find a post on Phoronix (again) which suggested the desktop installer was being post-postponed until FreeBSD 15.2. Unfortunately, that post doesn't seem to have been picked up by LLMs and bloggers. It also doesn't link to a clear, official source. Follow-up thoughts After a few hours of digging and reading reports and comparing blog posts like a conspiracy theorist on a caffeine-binge, I surfaced with a few thoughts and conclusions. First, I'm sure it is of no surprise to anyone that there is a lot of made up news in the world. Some of it is LLM-generated; some of it is reports which comment on possibilities, mentioned elsewhere, as facts; others were probably accurate at the time of writing, but have become outdated as developments happened. Whatever the reason for the misinformation, it is important to remember that reports on-line, especially ones which don't link to an original, official source, may be false, reframed, or misinterpreting the information. In a similar vein, some tech blogs and news sites will copy and paste just about anything without confirming it. Some of them will even copy screenshots which either are not real or are not for the release they are covering. This is part of why DistroWatch tries to always provide its own, created in-house screenshots and we test any tips or tutorials to confirm they work as reported. Ironically, accurate news is not always well-cited or sourced. The two reports I could find confirming FreeBSD's new features were being delayed did not have any supporting link or quote. It was a case of one person copying something someone else had told them. It appears the information was correct, but there was no way for me (someone who didn't go to the Open Source Summit) to confirm the desktop environment setup feature was being delayed. Finally, and this may seem harsh, but I don't feel a though the FreeBSD Foundation (and the FreeBSD project) did a good job of sharing information on these new features and their eventual delay. As an example of this, the FreeBSD Quarterly Status Report in April reported the following: "A version of the [desktop setup] script was later adapted for integration into bsdinstall and into an installation ISO. After successful testing on both CURRENT and STABLE, a review has been submitted to add the desktop script to bsdinstall. That report says the feature has been tested in the project's STABLE branch and it has been submitted to be included in the installer. That was two months prior to the 15.1 release, so it sounds like a fait accompli. As far as I can tell, there was no official report from the project or the Foundation after that, saying the feature had been pushed back to a later version. As a result, blogs and reviewers continued to run with the stale information. Some of us, such as myself, took the time to test for the feature and noticed it was missing. Others appear to have just let an LLM write their review, as one report stated: "FreeBSD 15.1 includes several enhancements over previous versions, such as improved hardware support, updated WiFi drivers, and better power management. It also introduces a new KDE Plasma desktop install option, aiming to enhance the user experience on laptops and desktops." I feel like the confusion, and some false reports, could have been avoided if the FreeBSD project had been a bit more up front about what they were including and what they were holding back in the FreeBSD 15.1 release. As it is, there are some people out there who are probably going to wonder why they can't get the new desktop setup feature to work. The simple truth is: it doesn't yet exist. |
