Wireless GUI: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

I'm fairly new to FreeBSD and absolutely new to this particular forum so apologies if this is something that comes up all the time.

The short story: I think FreeBSD needs some way of making mobile networking easier.

The long story: I've worked in computing in Universities for about 30 years. I started with BSD running on a PDP/11, then SunOS, then Solaris. I'm probably unusual in never having owned and used either a Windows PC or a Mac. For many years I had various Sun machines at home. When I got my first laptop I ran Linux on it for a while and then switched to Solaris and eventually OpenSolaris. My first laptop was used to enable me to work on long train journeys: it had no mobile network connectivity and I would move stuff to and from it via wired networks at home and at work. Then mobile broadband came along: I was not an early user because it was expensive but I did eventually sign up and, with a bit of struggle, got OpenSolaris to work with it.

Since then, of course, Solaris has pretty much died for users like me, and OpenSolaris/Indiana really isn't an option, so a few years ago I decided that I was going to have to give up Solaris and find something else. My first alternative was Debian, but I found the whole experience frustrating in many ways, and about 2 years ago I switched to FreeBSD. There is a lot to like about FreeBSD for a traditional Unix user and I am surprised in many ways that it is not more popular than it is, though I suppose it passed under my radar for a long while too.

The reason for this rather long introduction is to make the point that, though I'm not a developer and have never been a professional sysadmin, I am a much more than averagely-competent user. I've set up and run a small Solaris cluster and was getting Linux and Solaris running on laptop machines at a time when that was really unusual.

What everyone wants now, myself included, is internet connectivity "on the go" and in this area, I think Linux wins over FreeBSD by a mile. I have mobile broadband running on my laptop (under FreeBSD) but it was a bit of a struggle, I needed help from these forums and spent a fair bit of time tinkering with the PPP configuration file. Similarly, I have WiFi working, again after tinkering with wpa_supplicant. I have used wifimgr and it is ok, but I'm often driven to editing wpa_supplicant.conf by hand and running ifconfig.

Linux has a tool called, I think, NetworkManager and a little control icon called nm-applet and it is incredibly easy to use. You can set up a new connection in seconds for wired, wireless or mobile, and it manages them all seamlessly. I've found a couple of threads on these forums mentioning nm-applet, but neither it nor an equivalent seems to be available in FreeBSD.

As I said at the outset, I am new here, I don't mean to cause any offence, and these are just "thoughts" for which the Off-Topic forum seems the right place. I am still learning FreeBSD and I want to continue to do so and to use it for the foreseeable future, but it seems to me that its future must include reasonable compatibility with laptops (I'm not suggesting tablets or phones), and that in turn means reasonably straightforward mobile internet.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

We have wpa_supplicant for WPA and WEP and we have ifconfig for OPEN and WEP.

They both work and we seem to have all we need. I usually knock together a few scripts to make the process easier to change network.

If you are looking for a GUI network manager, I cant help you since I despise both GNOME 3 and KDE 4 so as far as I am concerned, Linux doesn't have any decent GUI network managers either.

wicd works better as a command-line tool when on Linux too ;)
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

Lack of such network manager app is simply down to the lack of enthusiasm to develop one *). The network manager from Linux is absolutely not portable to FreeBSD because it relies on Linux specific APIs that are not standardised, not even between different Linux distros (!!!). All the other UNIX-like operating systems than Linux were historically geared towards servers rather than workstations/laptops and for example with FreeBSD the laptop users who would like to have such network manager are still a small minority among FreeBSD users if you count in number of machines that have FreeBSD installed.

*) FreeBSD is developed very much by its users nowadays so this should also tell what kind of use the current crop of FreeBSD developers are using the OS for.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

kpedersen said:
If you are looking for a GUI network manager, I cant help you since I despise both GNOME 3 and KDE 4 so as far as I am concerned, Linux doesn't have any decent GUI network managers either.

wicd works better as a command-line tool when on Linux too ;)

Wicd has the advantage in that it is not tied to KDE or GNOME. Unfortunately I don't think there is a wicd port yet.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

As I said, just a thought, but:

We have wpa_supplicant ... and we have ifconfig

I think you will find that I did say I use those, but I am pointing out that for most users they do not simplify roaming.

I despise both GNOME 3 and KDE 4

Did I mention either of those? In fact I use a completely customised fvwm and can run nm-applet in a tray activated by a keyboard shortcut. I don't like GNOME or KDE either.

But there is nothing inherently wrong with simple and/or graphical. I used to use a dumb terminal before X came along, but I don't now, even though I make extensive use of xterms. Do you not use a window system at all?
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

robspop said:
Linux has a tool called, I think, NetworkManager.

Assuming you meant the GUI application called NetworkManager rather than the service (also called NetworkManager), Linux doesn't have that GUI tool. Gnome does. Unfortunately much of Gnome is less than portable. And I (and many others) dislike GNOME and all the dependencies it drags in anyway. (https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/NetworkManager). So would not really be a valid option for a FreeBSD GUI WiFi manager.

As for using a window manager. The only real option on Linux for a lightweight GUI WiFi manager is wicd (unless you like dragging in GNOME/KDE dependencies and getting the network manager to work separately from the rest of the DE). So Linux doesn't really have FreeBSD beat by much when it comes to GUI WiFi to be honest. Especially when net-mgmt/wifimgr wouldn't need much tweaking to provide the functionality you would appreciate from (I am guessing) wicd.

But like I said, with a few simple scripts, the tools provided by FreeBSD are very usable for a roaming system. Especially for users like me who only use a window manager with no system tray (rendering things like nm-applet useless).

Edit: wpa_supplicant does come with a GUI counterpart (using Qt) called wpa_gui. It is fairly simplistic but is another option.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

with FreeBSD the laptop users are still a small minority

I'm sure you're right, but there seems to be a general tide that has flowed from servers with dumb(ish) terminals to workstations with network file servers to standalone machines to laptops. I work at a large university that has thousands of students, the vast majority of whom now own laptops (there is actually a move to stop providing computer labs and substitute some sort of laptop support scheme).

I am also not suggesting attempting to port either NetworkManager or its applet to FreeBSD. I just give it as an example of a tool that I still think has excellent functionality.

I absolutely agree with comments about bloated desktops and huge dependency requirements: as I said, I use fvwm and have a completely blank desktop that I love. I have used FreeBSD on a laptop for a couple of years now. I have not tried wpa_gui but I have used wifimgr, ifconfig. etc, and I agree that they do the job. Maybe the typical FreeBSD user will always be happy with those tools. I wonder though if there wouldn't be a potentially larger pool of users if it was easier to be one in a mobile world.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

The setup for wicd is python based. I have not as-of-yet installed it but the configuration only took a few minutes.
And it is not working.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

If you are a desktop user on a laptop and want GUI tools I personally think you should take a look at PC-BSD.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

It's not a GUI, but I use this little script when I don't feel like editing /etc/wap_supplicant.conf. However, it's really not that much easier than editing a line in /etc/rc.conf and doing sudo service netif restart.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

D4rkSilver said:
If you are a desktop user on a laptop and want gui tools I personally think you should take a look at PC-BSD

I have heard PC-BSD does come with a decent GUI WiFi manager but if you want to keep with FreeBSD and a simple X11 window manager, you might see if you can use the WiFi manager separately (perhaps it is in the ports collection somewhere?).
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

kpedersen said:
robspop said:
Linux has a tool called, I think, NetworkManager.

Assuming you meant the GUI application called NetworkManager rather than the service (also called NetworkManager), Linux doesn't have that GUI tool. Gnome does. Unfortunately much of Gnome is less than portable. And I (and many others) dislike GNOME and all the dependencies it drags in anyway. (https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/NetworkManager). So would not really be a valid option for a FreeBSD GUI WiFi manager.

As for using a window manager. The only real option on Linux for a lightweight GUI WiFi manager is wicd (unless you like dragging in GNOME/KDE dependencies and getting the network manager to work separately from the rest of the DE). So Linux doesn't really have FreeBSD beat by much when it comes to GUI WiFi to be honest. Especially when net-mgmt/wifimgr wouldn't need much tweaking to provide the functionality you would appreciate from (I am guessing) wicd.

But like I said, with a few simple scripts, the tools provided by FreeBSD are very usable for a roaming system. Especially for users like me who only use a window manager with no system tray (rendering things like nm-applet useless).

Edit: wpa_supplicant does come with a GUI counterpart (using Qt) called wpa_gui. It is fairly simplistic but is another option.

I remember trying to use wicd back on Arch Linux years ago, never worked. Network manager was also pretty bad, flaked alot. Honestly for most things I found it easier just to type the commands to do the wireless.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

I think I did not express myself very well in my original post.

To be a bit more clear perhaps: I like FreeBSD a lot. I think it has many virtues and that for people who want to run a Unix(-like) box it is now the best option. It seems to me to have many advantages over Linux.

However, while I get lots of requests for help with Linux from people of all sorts, I have never had one from anyone about any BSD. I work in a University, in a Department of Computing, and many of my colleagues use Linux, but most seem to regard FreeBSD as some sort of "step too far", even though many were disappointed when Solaris was dropped. Lots of students have laptops running various Linuxes, and quite a few have Macbooks as that gives them a working command line and access to standard Unix utilities, but I have never met one running any BSD (except the Mac users of course :) ).

I wonder why this is, and one of the answers I have found is that it is relatively difficult to set up laptops, and laptops are what people are increasingly using.

The main issues with laptops appear to be:
  • hardware not supported
  • suspend/resume not working
  • wifi not working

I don't think there is much that can be done about the first two of these, they are a problem for all non-Windows operating systems, and users seem to be willing to make some compromises in this area.

The last one, though, possibly could be tackled, and that was the point of my post. Personally, I do have both wifi and mobile broadband working on my laptop. I use wifimgr with the latter and have no problem, though I did set up the original wpa_supplicant by hand and still occasionally use ifconfig if I need to. Setting up mobile broadband was a serious chore though, and even now it doesn't handle a patchy signal very well (on a train, for example).

To summarise, I am not asking for help to get wifi working; I am suggesting that if it was easier, then maybe FreeBSD would have a potentially bigger pool of users.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

I'm an occasional lurker on this forums, and was doing fine like this for months, but this topic enraged me enough to finally register.
This topic perfectly demonstrates exactly what is wrong with FreeBSD. So much stereotypical nonsense and backward, unprogressive thinking really shows out here.

The Original Poster made perfectly clear, concise and valid point in excellent manner. Your replies, dear FreeBSD community, are insubstantial.

Lets section them:

kpedersen said:
They both work and we seem to have all we need.
What does it mean that they work? They successfully fulfill all network connectivity needs which could potential user need? According to OP-s post FAR FROM IT - so, no, they don't really just 'work'. They are PITA for anything except most basic config. And they suck for that too.

kpedersen said:
Linux doesn't have any decent GUI network managers either.
It has 2 excellent GUI managers. Wicd and NetworkManager. Both are mentioned. And used by millions. And work great.

kpedersen said:
wicd works better as a command-line tool when on Linux too ;)
I disagree.

kpa said:
Lack of such network manager app is simply down to the lack of enthusiasm to develop one *).
Exactly. And that's the reason why FreeBSD, despite being developed for so many years, stays and cements its place in its little obscure, niche usage.

kpedersen said:
Assuming you meant the GUI application called NetworkManager rather than the service (also called NetworkManager), Linux doesn't have that GUI tool. Gnome does. Unfortunately much of Gnome is less than portable. And I (and many others) dislike GNOME and all the dependencies it drags in anyway. (https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/NetworkManager). So would not really be a valid option for a FreeBSD GUI WiFi manager.
I strongly disagree. NetworkManager's only GNOME dependency is ~400 kb libsoup library. And the GTK toolkit is not actually a GNOME product, they just used and adopted it for their own needs. But toolkit in itself is DE agnostic. As is the case for qt - KDE. For example, Slackware has NetworkManager in its base and they ditched whole Gnome few years ago.

Anyway, all that doesn't matter because, as @kpa rightly noted, NM is designed to talk to Linux interfaces, thus porting is not really simple, if possible at all, and the FreeBSD project would be much better off by creating its own tool from scratch, which surely couldn't be too difficult since its great backend is praised repeatedly through this thread. Right? :)

So dear OP, since I believe you deserve a honest answer, here you will get it from me:
There is no wireless GUI in FreeBSD because devs don't want to code any GUI frontend. There are mix of reasons for that. Also, this highly prevalent mindset of worshiping command line and hating on GUI which is widespread around here doesn't help either. But that is what defines FreeBSD, so you should probably accept it, or move on. They are too much scared of becoming too similar to that popular guy at the party, which gets all the attention, handsome cousin Linux. So they are trying to hold onto some old principles, which are not all that bad in themselves, have their own advantages in simplicity I will give them that, but are not really made for convenience to the end-user, nor they were conceived with modern use-case in mind. And it caters more to that odd type of people which take pride in how they did something the hardest way possible, strongly defending it as the only true way...

Cheers
 
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Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

You seem to be one of those who think that there's some central committee sitting somewhere that decides what goes in to FreeBSD and what doesn't. That's as far as from the truth as it can be. As I noted above (the part that you conviniently ignored) FreeBSD developers (especially the teams like the X11 and the Gnome teams) are largely individual enthusiast users of FreeBSD who are also capable programmers. They have their own interests and won't take any crap from anyone about what their interests should be because they just know better and don't have time to dabble in what they consider non-essential for their own work. If you want something to be developed either do it yourself or look into motivating someone with the right skills to do the job. If you want to convey a message to those (in your view) incompetent developers, go talk to them on the mailing lists, they are all ears for suggestions. I'd however use a rather different tone than the one you used here.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

@Jurik, while you have some valid points, your argument loses preponderance because of how you present it. This thread certainly exhibits the propensity for FreeBSD users to suffer from either poor comprehension or fanboyitis causing blind bias, most likely a little bit of both -- but show me one community not suffering either of these conditions.
 
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Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

robspop said:
I'm fairly new to FreeBSD...

Me too.

robspop said:
The short story: I think FreeBSD needs some way of making mobile networking easier.

Me too.

robspop said:
The long story: I've worked in computing in Universities for about 30 years. I started with BSD running on a PDP/11, then SunOS, then Solaris. I'm probably unusual in never having owned and used either a Windows PC or a Mac. For many years I had various Sun machines at home. When I got my first laptop I ran Linux on it for a while and then switched to Solaris and eventually OpenSolaris. My first laptop was used to enable me to work on long train journeys: it had no mobile network connectivity and I would move stuff to and from it via wired networks at home and at work. Then mobile broadband came along: I was not an early user because it was expensive but I did eventually sign up and, with a bit of struggle, got OpenSolaris to work with it.

Since then, of course, Solaris has pretty much died for users like me, and OpenSolaris/Indiana really isn't an option, so a few years ago I decided that I was going to have to give up Solaris and find something else. My first alternative was Debian, but I found the whole experience frustrating in many ways, and about 2 years ago I switched to FreeBSD. There is a lot to like about FreeBSD for a traditional Unix user and I am surprised in many ways that it is not more popular than it is, though I suppose it passed under my radar for a long while too.

Thanks for sharing; I enjoyed the read.

robspop said:
The reason for this rather long introduction is to make the point that, though I'm not a developer and have never been a professional sysadmin, I am a much more than averagely-competent user. I've set up and run a small Solaris cluster and was getting Linux and Solaris running on laptop machines at a time when that was really unusual.

What everyone wants now, myself included, is internet connectivity "on the go" and in this area, I think Linux wins over FreeBSD by a mile. I have mobile broadband running on my laptop (under FreeBSD) but it was a bit of a struggle, I needed help from these forums and spent a fair bit of time tinkering with the PPP configuration file. Similarly, I have WiFi working, again after tinkering with wpa_supplicant. I have used wifimgr and it is ok, but I'm often driven to editing wpa_supplicant.conf by hand and running ifconfig.

I don't have near as much experience as you in UNIX or UNIX-like systems, although I have spent a lot more time with various Linusi (OpenSUSE and Gentoo) than FreeBSD, and I have to say that I share your opinion.

Linux has a tool called, I think, NetworkManager and a little control icon called nm-applet and it is incredibly easy to use. You can set up a new connection in seconds for wired, wireless or mobile, and it manages them all seamlessly. I've found a couple of threads on these forums mentioning nm-applet, but neither it nor an equivalent seems to be available in FreeBSD.

As I said at the outset, I am new here, I don't mean to cause any offence, and these are just "thoughts" for which the Off-Topic forum seems the right place. I am still learning FreeBSD and I want to continue to do so and to use it for the foreseeable future, but it seems to me that its future must include reasonable compatibility with laptops (I'm not suggesting tablets or phones), and that in turn means reasonably straightforward mobile internet.

I was compelled to post because I just installed 10.0-RELEASE onto an old laptop I picked up today and the process to configure WiFi, while only taking 5 minutes, was a farce; at least when acknowledging the fact that it's 2014 and not 1995 it was. I had to edit 3 files and reboot the system twice to get wireless conectivity; this should either be a one-line command or, if using a DE, click-click-click procedure. It's relative; I know 5 minutes is insignificant and I'm a novice FreeBSD user, but such a procedure is prehistoric in today's terms and really should be updated from its antiquated state to something resembling 21st century technology.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

kpedersen said:
I have heard PC-BSD does come with a decent GUI WiFi manager but if you want to keep with FreeBSD and a simple X11 window manager, you might see if you can use the WiFi manager separately (perhaps it is in the ports collection somewhere?).

net/pcbsd-netmanager was in the ports tree. Perhaps it still is. I tried it a long time ago but could not get it to work under FreeBSD. Also, it's dependencies include much of KDE.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

nanotek said:
I was compelled to post because I just installed 10.0-RELEASE onto an old laptop I picked up today and the process to configure WiFi, while only taking 5 minutes, was a farce; at least when acknowledging the fact that it's 2014 and not 1995 it was. I had to edit 3 files and reboot the system twice to get wireless conectivity; this should either be a one-line command or, if using a DE, click-click-click procedure. It's relative; I know 5 minutes is insignificant and I'm a novice FreeBSD user, but such a procedure is prehistoric in today's terms and really should be updated from its antiquated state to something resembling 21st century technology.

This compelled me to post. I'm not a laptop user, I really dislike them. I don't want "on the go networking", that everyone else appears to want and I've been using FreeBSD as a desktop since 3.3.

With all that being said:
I install FreeBSD 10.0 Release on a Core2Duo Sony Vaio laptop that I borrowed from work last weekend just to play with the new release. During the install I chose the wireless network name and entered the network password and that was it. I didn't have to edit any files.

Now I did not play with switching networks or anything like that so maybe that is more complicated, although I suspect it has more to do with the wireless device of the laptop.

What does the installer use to configure wireless networks? And could this be adapted into something the average user can use?

And finally, I be giving this some thought since the beginning of this thread, but I would volunteer to work on a set of FreeBSD specific "user friendly" GUI tools (given that they are written in Python for now because my C is rusty) and I'd be more than happy to start with a wi-fi app. But the 1st stumbling block I see is what toolkit? No matter what is selected some group is going to complain that toolkit is too heavy or that it sucks. So I'm thinking that the tools would need be able to support multiple toolkits. Can others see all the complexity now in designing a GUI to please the masses. I can' really go by what I think because I use i3 as my DE.

I sure welcome any thoughts that could help me decided if I really want to take any of this on.
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

kpa said:
You seem to be one of those who think that there's some central committee sitting somewhere that decides what goes in to FreeBSD and what doesn't.
Not at all. But I can clearly see what in 20+ years of FreeBSD development 'went in' and what didn't. That alone is enough to make founded claims about FreeBSD developer's ideas, direction and goals.

But now that you mention 'central comittee', which (it seems at least) you consider a good thing not having it, I have to disagree. IMNSHO FreeBSD lacks a clear direction and leadership of head figure (or central comittee if you please) which would set clear goals, priorites, pathways for the project. Sort of what Theo does for OpenBSD, tho you would be better off with someone little less... 'radical'. :)

kpa said:
FreeBSD developers (especially the teams like the X11 and the Gnome teams) are largely individual enthusiast users of FreeBSD who are also capable programmers.
Well actually, I don't doubt their expertize, nor do I question that anywhere in my previous post. I called them lazy, yes, but thats entirely different thing.

kpa said:
They have their own interests and won't take any crap from anyone about what their interests should be because they just know better and don't have time to dabble in what they consider non-essential for their own work.
Now with this kind of thinking, you can justify pretty much everything. Take the worst, most lacking, piece of code from any project and your quote will defend it just like that.
Noone knows it all and the only way forward is in exchanging ideas and looking outside of your pretty little... garden.
nanotek said:
@Jurik, while you have some valid points, your argument loses preponderance because of how you present it.
Well I agree my tone was little harsh but it was not uncalled for. I registrated and posted only because certain misinformations struck a nerve and had to be straighted out.

Now, don't label me for some kind of hater. No, that would be very wrong. My only disappointment with FreeBSD is that it could have become much more then what it is. If you all would be little more open minded and brave enough to lead forward with some progressive changes! The author of this topic brought up nice idea of GUI wireless, but there is sadly no interest for any GUI userland tools in this project. Hell, even X is not included in base install (which even ultra conservative OpenBSD have). So its also kinda hard to accept FreeBSD as 'complete unified OS' (which *BSD proponents often brag about) while not even having display server. But alright, will not delve into that topic too much as I suppose modularity is in high regards here, and everyone is happy with just having X in ports. And I don't want ocean of angry reactions on that my claim to emerge. But that's the easy way of doing things. And the way of stagnation. And if you want to go forward, that has to change.

So long ~
 
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I've edited the subject of this thread to add "Wireless GUI" to make sure other interested people see it.

A couple of points:

wpa_supplicant(8) handles WPA, WEP, and no encryption at all. There is no need to use ifconfig(8) for WEP.

Remember that programs aren't magically created. If you want one, find one that works, or port and adapt one, or write one, or hire somebody to write one, or convince the Foundation to fund the writing of one.

A wireless GUI would not go into base because the base does not have X or a GUI toolkit, but it would be available from ports.

@roddierod might write it in Python. I would start by developing a description of the minimum of what such a program should do:

Show a list of available wireless networks and wired connections.

Allow connection to those networks and entry of a passphrase, if needed.

Update /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf to retain the information.
 
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In addition to NetworkManager and Wicd there is another option that may be more ammendable to the BSD's. Arch LInux, prior to the migration to systemd, had a menu option. If the option was set in rc.conf the kernel would boot normally up to the point were the network connection was established. Then the process would pause and an ncurses menu would appear listing preconfigured menu options that were selectable. Select the desired network and finish booting with the "enter" key.
In Arch the network options were previously configured in an interfaces file.

I do not have the skills to set this up but I believe that it would not entail linux api's. Additionally, it would work for command line warriors.
 
Since my original post I have installed the new 10.0 release on my laptop. Wifi works fine, as before (I kept my old wpa_supplicant.conf and everything connected straight away). However, my mobile broadband no longer works. I've kept the ppp.conf file and it's the same "dongle" as before, but now it is seen as a mass-storage device and loaded as /dev/cd0. I can remember this being a problem some years ago with these devices, and I can even remember solving it. Right now though I don't know what the answer is. I've posted a query here on the forums but so far had no reply.

At present, I am very busy at work, I do not have time to spend on this, and I cannot do without mobile internet access. I had a couple of spare hours on Monday evening and I did a quick install of Debian on a spare disk. I used the xfce version so no gnome and no kde. It works fine: literally 4 or 5 clicks set the whole thing up and that's it. Is that such a bad thing?

If I can't get this to work I will have to go with Debian because I need it. That will mean one system on my laptop, another on my desktop: not impossible by any means, but it's easier if they are the same. I would be very sorry not to use FreeBSD but I suppose it might come to that.

I really admire the people who write and maintain the code that makes systems like FreeBSD work, and who do this for no financial reward. I take the point that someone would have to volunteer to do this, and I acknowledge that I don't have the skills or the time or the energy to do it myself.

There's a video on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSut68fZqAc that shows some sort of FreeBSD vs Linux thing: it's a few years old and a bit daft anyway, but it has some people allegedly from the FreeBSD development team and their participation at least appears to show that they might have hoped people would use the system. Is that no longer true?
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

roddierod said:
And finally, I be giving this some thought since the beginning of this thread, but I would volunteer to work on a set of FreeBSD specific "user friendly" GUI tools (given that they are written in Python for now because my C is rusty) and I'd be more than happy to start with a wi-fi app. But the 1st stumbling block I see is what toolkit? No matter what is selected some group is going to complain that toolkit is too heavy or that it sucks. So I'm thinking that the tools would need be able to support multiple toolkits. Can others see all the complexity now in designing a GUI to please the masses. I can' really go by what I think because I use i3 as my DE.
Alrightie, these are some great news, I hope you can persist and follow up on that initiative, many would be grateful and find it useful. Who knows, maybe you kickstart a new era in which usefullness of simple GUI tools is widely recognized and encouraged. :e

Now my opinion about ideal toolkit choice for FreeBSD. Forget about GTK and qt. They would work in 2005, but In their latest incarnations they both lost a compass, went astray and have become heavy, slow and bloated. Today's best candidates are EFL and FLTK. Take your pick. Both have python bindings so don't need to worry about that. EFL are best known for being building blocks for one of lightest, slickest desktop environment - E17. FLTK is maybe lesser known but IMO still very worthy, super-light-fast contender. So check them out. Doesn't matter what you pick. Application made using any of those 2 toolkits will work for everyone with just a few additional graphic libraries installed!
 
Re: "Killer App" for FreeBSD?

roddierod said:
What does the installer use to configure wireless networks? And could this be adapted into something the average user can use?
If you like the way the installer configures things, you might be interested in sysutils/bsdconfig,
 
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