On 19/07/2011 08:11, Polytropon wrote:
On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:39:02 +0200, Jerome Herman wrote:
On 19/07/2011 01:21, Gary Gatten wrote:
<snip>
This may get me flamed (probably will) but I'm wondering what
the relationship is between FreeBSD and PC-BSD? PERHAPS if
they were to somehow join forces, share development load, etc.
and "unify" the FreeBSD offerings under one roof; ie: PC-BSD and SERVER-BSD.
Basically, PC-BSD is just a layer of candy over an almost untouched
FreeBSD, so it is not the same at all than what you can see with Linux
distros.
PC-BSD offers a new interactive installer, and comes with KDE
preinstalled and preconfigured. There's also some autodetect
magic under the hood. On sufficiently recent hardware, it works
very well. However, its hardware requirements are _high_ above
those of a "normal" FreeBSD system.
PC-BSD offers a graphical and simple installer, and an arguably easier
package system.
As far as I know, the downside of the forced interactivity
is now gone, as there's also a command line tool for using
PBI packages.
Arguing... what is easier at manually locating software using
a web browser, manually downloading it and interactively
holding the installer's hand while installing software? :-)
Well, of course installing is easier. But package management is not just
about installing.
General management tends to be a little harder, for example if you need
a specific version of PHP-LDAP, that matches your server LDAP and your
server SASL.
Rigid packages won't allow fine grained tweaking that you might need.
Also it installs KDE and automatically makes a few decisions.
You can actually just use the graphical installer in order to install a
standard FreeBSD, even if some tricky options won't be available from
the installer (but you can still run sysinstall later to activate them)
The default installation works quite well, there's only few
things you need to configure (especially if you're not
comfortable with the default settings). I have some friends
being long-term PC-BSD users, it's just no _my_ cup of tea
as I don't like KDE much.
I personnally use it as an easy installer for Crypto-ZFS servers.
The installer can even be used to install configurations that
sysinstall can't.
I believe several flavors of Linux have successfully done
this. Perhaps for licensing reasons more than technical,
but nonetheless there were two offerings each focused on
either a desktop or server deployment strategy.
But there are "mixed forms" of systems. Precisely differentiating
between "a server" and "a PC" isn't always possible. For
example, if you have a workstation that is used by more than
one user, is this a PC, a _personal_ computer anymore? Or
what if you use a laptop computer (maybe due to energy
consumption) to act as a server, and once a week you use
it as a desktop?
Just a thought. I'm not married to any particular OS -
it's a tool and I use what suites my needs best. I
enjoy FreeBSD and like what it stands for - I would
like to see it grow; both technically and in popularity.
Well the PC-BSD layer gives a great installer, now the only thing needed
would be a great server/daemons management layer.
And better german language support in KDE. :-)
A FreeBSD distro with LDAP, ACL and MAC management would be nice though.
You could create a port that brings all this functionality
in one rush. Remember that the ports collection is more than
just about installing software - it can be used to even
bring such features to the system and configure them.
A port that would reboot in single user, use tunefs to activate ACL here
and there, activate MAC and move most users to an LDAP auth ? I don't
think so.
Actually I would be scared if such a port was accepted in the port tree.
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