Why did you choose to stay with FreeBSD?

It's a matter of compile farm.

FreeBSD packages are compiled when RELEASE comes out, and that's it. For apt/yum stuff you need your farm laying eggs constantly.

Regarding MIDI, a lot needs to be done, however i also feel that FreeBSD lacks usable MIDI scoring/editing/playback tool, so i decided to start a project of my own. Feel free to contribute.
 
Zare said:
It's a matter of compile farm.

FreeBSD packages are compiled when RELEASE comes out, and that's it. For apt/yum stuff you need your farm laying eggs constantly.

Regarding MIDI, a lot needs to be done, however i also feel that FreeBSD lacks usable MIDI scoring/editing/playback tool, so i decided to start a project of my own. Feel free to contribute.
Click to expand...
Is there a link to your project? Does it use a soft-synth or have you integrated the soft-synth inside your project?
 
It will be a TSE3 based thing with embedded FluidSynth.

There is no project page, i just started the whole thing. Right now i'm running some proof of concept tests. I plan to do a Steinberg style routing, where MIDI track routes to physical interface or in-program synthesizer based on FluidSynth. That way, you can insert a hi-res multilayered sf2 with only one program inside it, lets say "synth pad", and route your track to that instance of virtual synth.

It eliminates memory usage and stuff. I never found a decent *nix sf2 editor, not that i looked much, because freeware Synthfont Viena for win32 emulates just fine.

Currently occupied with effective delivery of MIDI events between TSE3 and FluidSynth engine shared inside a program. After those proof of concept tests are done, i'll go GUI crafting and app building which will surely take a few months before anything usable is out.

So if someone wants to lend a hand...
 
I'm interested. If you put up a project page, let me know. I'm not too familiar with the technical details of MIDI myself, but once my examinations are over next month I can look into this.

I'm also looking to create a simple MIDI GUI application which will interface with Fluidsynth.
 
Ok, i'll soon pack some initial backend code + scribblings and put them on the web.

@nekoexmachina, thx, i didn't know that :)
 
nekoexmachina said:
Your are a little bit wrong: packages/version-stable on most mirrors contain most up-to-date packages (e.g. current ports version of them), compiled on -RELEASE.
And you do not need to download it by-hand, just set PACKAGESITE to ftp://my.mirror.here/path/ports/arch/packages-8-stable or something.
Click to expand...

That does not solve things at all since any packages that incorporate kernel modules (like virtualbox) are not compatible with RELEASE.
 
I choose to stay with FreeBSD because i like ports system and it can do all what i need on my desktop perfect.
 
Why do you prefer FreeBSD over Linux?

Hey guys,

sorry if someone here is annoyed by this question ;)
I'd like to know for what reasons you prefer FreeBSD over Linux! If you do.

It's because I've used Gentoo so far, and want to give FreeBSD a try soon.
I know, I will have to make my own experiences with it anyway, so I'm asking for your personal reasons.

I'm simply interested. :p
 
This horse has been beaten to death on numerous occasions already.
 
@Blackbird

Check this thread mate: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=11642

Blackbird said:
It's because I've used Gentoo so far, and want to give FreeBSD a try soon.
I know, I will have to make my own experiences with it anyway, so I'm asking for your personal reasons.
Click to expand...

Funny, I came here the same road (Slackware --> Gentoo --> FreeBSD) ;)

Read in all places that 'this thingy' in Gentoo is based o 'that thingy' from FreeBSD so on and on, so I decided to try the source itself, beginnings were hard (do not treat FreeBSD as just another distro, You will have to learn new operating system).
 
I really don't know. :) After a course at uni where we were to code a shell application on Unix, I just felt like home. So I installed FreeBSD as firewall and server, and during this i fell in love with FreeBSD and didn't see any reason to continue using Windows on my desktop computer... Have a background with Slackware during the 90ies, but, FreeBSD does give an order and structure that I've not seen anywhere. (and double plus good to the ports-system)

If love is the reason, then love it is :stud
 
harishankar said:
No the package system is not great - it's more an afterthought to ports and even using tools like pkg_upgrade etc. are not guaranteed to be 100% all right because of ports dependencies.

Also upgrading using only packages is a pain because the ports-* tools tend to use the ports version and not the packages versions as I found out. So naturally that option is gone. Also many ports are not available as packages in -STABLE or -RELEASE so installing one port means upgrading all the related ports as well and eventually switching entirely to ports as version dependencies can get clobbered by mixing ports with packages.

I found a lot of stuff I need locked up in ports and to upgrade to a new port, I need to upgrade the whole system using the ports tree to prevent dependency breakage.

I really love the base system of FreeBSD and its organization, but ports is only for those who can wait for long compile times. I prefer using applications to compiling them.

People on these forums might say Linux is rubbish, but for a laptop/desktop user stuff just works fine. Even my webcam works out of the box. I've already gone back to Debian currently, but I regret having to move back. Sadly I cannot deal with the compile time for ports and to say that packages is a decent alternative is misleading. It isn't by a long shot.

Apologies for the plain speak though. I know I will get flamed for this, but I cannot help being honest about my opinion. Hopefully one day I will go back to FreeBSD by the PC BSD route. When hardware support is even more improved. :)
Click to expand...
I do completely agree with this post. I like ports, then they should be an option for people in need of optimizing them system using compiled code. For generic system use a working binary package system update should be a must and something that can give Freebsd even more appeal. Then a user can choose what to do: binary packages or ports. It could also be possible decide to always compile base system update and have packages for graphics like KDE/gnome for example.

BTW, I discovered Freebsd like in 2002 (version 4.1 if memory serve me well) and abandoned it becouse - yes it was and it is a lot stable and reliable - then really time consuming in administration.

I discovered it again with the release of version 8 and the need to replace an old Linux Red Hat 7.1 firewall/internet gateway/file server on my personal/family LAN. I built a machine with some spare parts hardware and it works just fine with little memory (768 on a AMD Athlon machine). Even if not many packages are installed (mostly base system/network tools/samba/ssh/jails for my personal web server and nmap scanner, some lightweit Gnome Light install, it is time consuming to be constantly updated and sometimes reboot it is also needed to fix updates problems. I know, if I want I could avoid to update the base system, maybe just look for port audit problems, then I tend to like updated system so this Freebsd - very very stable - is rebooted a lot more compared to my old Red Hat 7.1 box.

Just to become even more familiar I also installed a couple of virtual machines under VMware Workstation on my main desktop system, one is Freebsd and the other PCBSD): they are mainly virtual box then they are loaded with pretty much everything and have all this updated is a nightmare (on Freebsd 8 box; obviously PCBSD is different and not so often updated). Example: I just finished to compile 4.3.3_1 (if memory serve me well) KDE and I can see 4.4.4 out. I'm here in the process to compile it :-((( Using ports is a true nightmare on a desktop system in need to always be up to date. There is also the risk to broke stuff, I think I've been able to resolve a lot of things (gettex, apache and so on) in the process of the last big update done in middle May, then - for example - vmware tools are still broken (I know vmware tools is not Freebsd then I need that software).
 
Been with FreeBSD since 5.1. It was just what I was looking for. I've had no need to look back. I came to it from Centos. I also tried other various flavors of the Penguin.

It's open source, makes for very good tutor, also makes you lean how it works,
Rock solid stability,
Very good handbook,
Security, comes with ports, access, and privileges fairly locked down, you have to give permission for it to work, so you should know about the vulnerability,
Ports and packages in a central reliable repository,
Lots of ports/packages that cover most needs. For others there is wine which works well now, the Linux compat layer which runs Linux apps as well as Linux does perhaps, several virtual machine environments, look into changing ELF and you may be able to compile a Linux app on your box,
I appreciate the thousands of hours that goes into compiling all of those packages and maintaining all of those ports,
A knowledgeable community,
A complete OS, not a kernel with userland and other pieces stuck on it,
Jails, Network tools, Shells with interpreters built in, an update mechanism that works, even if it could still use some work, working acpi, updated scheduler, etc.
A first class effort by all of the contributors for a first class work in progress.

As for Flash, Photoshop, Modules for some hardware, NTFS support, printer support, etc. It is a work in progress. I think they are doing a dang good job.
 
Been using FreeBSD since the early 90's. For a server environment assuming you don't need Oracle it's great! For a desktop environment it's lacking and stick with winbloze...less hassle (and I get free licences through my company). Once FreeBSD has good support for a webcam, wine and skype or a good variant that's adopted by lots of people I converse with I'll most likely be sold completely.

With the above said, the things I like about FreeBSD are:

- Extensive documentation
- Easy Upgrade Paths
- Great Community
- Great Package Management
- Solid Performance all around

Things I don't like:

- Desktop support (read: webcam/skype/wine/etc)
- Hardware support (ok if you use old hardware)
- zfs (yeah yeah, just an opinion, but I don't like it, and am not forced to use it).

In closing, I use FreeBSD and have used it on about 95%+ of the machines I roll out, 4% of those machines get Oracle on a flavor of LINUX, and 1% of those machines winbloze.
 
pprocacci said:
Once FreeBSD has good support for a webcam, wine and skype
Click to expand...
Take a look at webcamd. Works pretty well.

Apparently Wine has seen some FreeBSD specific advancements recently too.

As for Skype, well, it's in ports so I assume it Just Works. Have you tried it? ;)
 
aragon said:
Take a look at webcamd. Works pretty well.
Click to expand...

Yes, I tried it, and it worked ok. This was back 2 months ago now I think. It would hang on close which I see looked like to be fixed now.

Apparently Wine has seen some FreeBSD specific advancements recently too.
Click to expand...

I'll wait until it works on amd64 archs. I've tried the whole chroot'd 32bit wine, and while it works, it was sloppy IMHO.

As for Skype, well, it's in ports so I assume it Just Works. Have you tried it? ;)
Click to expand...

Audio and Text work. Video is broken. The skype port doesn't see /dev/video0 (via webcamd). Again this was about two months ago when I gave it a go on FreeBSD-Stable.

I should probably try other OSS solutions that run on winbloze and FreeBSD for video related communications (that work with webcamd) similar to skype and convince those people I converse with to move away from skype. That would certainly get rid of 2 of the 3 requirements I have. Have any good solutions?
 
pprocacci said:
Yes, I tried it, and it worked ok.
Audio and Text work. Video is broken. The skype port doesn't see /dev/video0 (via webcamd). Again this was about two months ago when I gave it a go on FreeBSD-Stable.
I should probably try other OSS solutions that run on winbloze and FreeBSD for video related communications (that work with webcamd) similar to skype and convince those people I converse with to move away from skype. That would certainly get rid of 2 of the 3 requirements I have. Have any good solutions?
Click to expand...
I run Skype with video too on my virtual PCPSD box and it works just fine. BTW, why call Windows Windoze? Whats the sense? Windows is actually a very good OS and don't deserve jokes. I do prefer Open Source and free OS then I do own Windows licenses and I do appreciate the good job they did on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. This is the reason becouse I'm happy to have my main desktop under a 64 bit version of Windows 7 like I'm proud to run Freebsd 8-stable as my firewall/internet gateway/file server for my LAN. No flame, just my point of view.
 
Winbloze/Windoze is all at of habit actually (albeit a bad one). I do currently run Windows* 7 64-bit without problems and I do enjoy it, but I do (or would at least like to) move completely to BSD. When you say PCPSD, I assume you meant PC-BSD? Would you mind clarifying? I happen to run FreeBSD as my firewall/internet gateway/file server (nas) as well. ;P
 
pprocacci said:
Winbloze/Windoze is all at of habit actually (albeit a bad one). I do currently run Windows* 7 64-bit without problems and I do enjoy it, but I do (or would at least like to) move completely to BSD. When you say PCPSD, I assume you meant PC-BSD? Would you mind clarifying? I happen to run FreeBSD as my firewall/internet gateway/file server (nas) as well. ;P
Click to expand...
PC-BSD 8, yes. Just installed the Skype binary via the PC-BSD install tool and it worked out of the box.
 
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