On Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:58:08 -0500, Ian Gibson <ibgib...@gmail.com> wrote: > What's the situation re: PC-BSD? I thought they were 'FreeBSD on the > desktop', leaving FreeBSD itself to focus on being a great server OS.
FreeBSD per definition is a multi-purpose OS. It can be used on servers (and often is), on desktops, and also on embedded systems. Mixed forms (e. g. desktops that provide certain server functiona- lity) are also possible. There is no limitation as with some modern Linusi that require X to be getting installed - a problem for a server without any graphics. :-) > Isn't the whole point of PC-BSD to remove the need to do what the OP did > i.e. spend days or weeks installing and configuring FreeBSD with desktop > applications? The main goal of PC-BSD is to deliver a KDE-centered (!) system with certain preconfiguration and automatisms, as well as caterin the "first sight effect" that is often considered more important than strengths in software when questioning which OS to use (means that the choice of OS is judged by how it looks like). Please don't get me wrong: I have several friends using PC-BSD for some years now, and they love it. For me, as a "KDE hater", it is a complete no-go. As a German, too, as KDE's internationalisation and german language quality is inferior to those of Gnome or Xfce. You can scare off a German user with one english word. :-) Still, PC-BSD is an excellent system if you have sufficiently new hardware to run it on. KDE runs very well then. It may be possible that you need to manually add "illegal codecs" if you want to use the multimedia features. > It seems logical to me to keep FreeBSD as a server OS and build a > desktop separately on top of this, analogous to what Ubuntu did with > Debian (only BSD should of course be far superior!). It is not logical as FreeBSD is not (just) a server OS per definition, so it can't be kept being one. :-) In my opinion, "dividing" FreeBSD would make it less interesting to many users. Its flexibility and configurability makes it strong where other operating systems simply don't do the job. Let me give you a very individual example: I'm using FreeBSD on the desktop EXCLUSIVELY (!) since version 4.0. My home system is so old that you wouldn't want to have it for free. Still, I can do more, and faster!, than most idiots (sorry) with their new rocket-like PCs full of crapware. FreeBSD does NOT force me to upgrade my system just because I upgrade the OS. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
