PC-BSD 1.1 Screenshot Tour

linuxbeta writes to tell us DistroWatch is reporting that PC-BSD has released version 1.1 which updates the core OS to FreeBSD 6.1, adds better driver support to the kernel and improves the overall speed on many systems. OSDir also has a screenshot tour available for general consumption.

Open source projects are also plagued with rah-rah

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

PC-BSD has as its goals to be an easy-to-install-and-use desktop operating system, based on FreeBSD. To accomplish this, it currently has a graphical installation, which will enable even UNIX novices to easily install and get it running.

Phew, thank goodness, I was afraid PC-BSD had as its goals to be a hard-to-install-and-use desktop operating system, based on FreeBSD, and that to accomplish this, it would have a morse-code interface installation, which would enable only ham UNIX expects to get it running...

I mean come on, every desktop-oriented OS on the planet does/tries to do that, it's obvious. This sort of content-less marketting talk is usually spewed out by companies like Microsoft, so I'm always a bit disappointed to read it on open-source project pages.

Re:Screenshots

[$RANDOMLUSER]

It looks like the opening scene from The Sound of Music [imdb.com].

dhdjghfgh

[iamdrscience]

It's not completely meaningless. The first question that comes to mind when you hear about a new BSD distro is "what makes it different from the other BSDs?" and it answers that question -- it's like FreeBSD, but easier to install and get working on the desktop. Sure, FreeBSD also aims to be easy to install and useful as a desktop system, but it's not their main priority.

Re:Linux?

[Umbral Blot]

If you follow that logic then you should be using windows. "Note that only some of the software out there runs under Windows emulation mode (WINE). /me = big fan of Linux on the server, however for the desktop - it's not as usably as the Weasel."

DesktopBSD

[Distinguished Hero]

I prefer DesktopBSD [desktopbsd.net] to PC-BSD as DesktopBSD uses ports, whereas PC-BSD seems rather fond of these PBI [pbidir.com] things, which seem to emulate the worst Windows has to offer (a solution such as this [sourceforge.net] would have been a bit more bearable if they wanted to get away from the orthodox package management system.) That being said, I do with DesktopBSD would move on to FreeBSD 6 instead of 5.5.

Re:Open source projects are also plagued with rah-

[Lord_Slepnir]

While I'm not sure of any operating systems that require a morse code interface to run, I do know that some distributions don't try to go for user friendlyness and try to go for some other goals (such as performance). While yes, this is marketing drivel, it's not completely empty that they're going for an "easy-to-install-and-use desktop operating system".

Re:Open source projects are also plagued with rah-

[drinkypoo]

If all distro's wanted to make it easy to install an OS for the lamen, explain to me Gentoo.

Wow, you really put the "lame" in "lamen"(sic).

Gentoo is easy to install. If you just follow the directions, you get there. I know this is easy for me to say, because I have lots of experience, but really anyone who doesn't have the mindset of "this is too hard" will not have problems.

Funny thing is, even ubuntu won't install properly on my laptop. It will not boot if you cross the 512 cylinder boundary, and ubuntu by default creates one big filesystem even though I'm using IDE. Thus, grub is installed past cyl 512, and the system will not boot. Ubuntu doesn't tell you about this. Gentoo does, right in the install instructions, which is what takes the place of an installer. Ubuntu: 0. Gentoo: 1.