PC-BSD: The Most Beginner Friendly OS 154
soniyea writes "OSWeekly.com reviews PC-BSD and considers it the most beginner friendly OS in the market. 'From PC-BSD's roadmap to their default installation, I honestly feel good about where these guys are headed with their take on FreeBSD. This operating system has it all: support both from the professional level as well as that of the community, the ability to install Linux software, thanks to the binary compatibility layer, and of course — speed. Understand for most people, the speed factor is more or less a matter of opinion. But I have found that in some areas, it felt faster at the core level. Maybe I just had too much coffee that day? Either way, I totally recommend PC-BSD for anyone wanting to take a step into the wild side. FreeBSD, it's not just for geeks anymore.'"
PC-BSOD? (Score:5, Funny)
But...am I the only one that sees "BSD" and reads "BSOD"....every time??
Always nice to see serious efforts to bring *nix to the desktop, though.
Re:PC-BSOD? (Score:2)
6502 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:6502 (Score:2, Funny)
Rubbish. OK. Most computer users with 6502 based systems were FORCED to resort to assembler because their basic was so abominable (commode 64/vic20). But even the CPU's instruction set wasn't that "easy" or "good" for beginners.
What with all that zero page nonsense. Limited 8 bit registers. Etc.
Z80 and MC68000 were by far the nicer cpus.
Re:6502 (Score:5, Informative)
The BBC microcomputer used the 6502 {actually the 65C102 in its later incarnations} and that had an absolutely amazing BASIC. Even ran faster than some rival computers' machine code {thanks mostly to the use of hardware rather than software to generate the bitmapped display, which required up to 20KB of the 32KB for the framebuffer}.
The 6502, and the way the BBC used it, was also the inspiration for the ARM processor. SWIs were based on the BBC's MOS {kind of a BIOS on steroids; a full abstraction layer}. Basically, in order to access the BBC's hardware, you would set up a parameter block in memory; load its address into the X and Y registers and an instruction code into the accumulator; and call a fixed address in ROM {which pointed to an indirect jump instruction deriving its address from RAM, allowing user code to intercept MOS calls if necessary. You could have hours of fun with this}. If you only needed to pass two bytes and an instruction code then you could use the X and Y registers and call a different address. {I know, nowadays we pass parameters on the stack. This was the 1980s. Also, the 6502's hardware stack can only ever be 256 bytes big due to the S register -- the stack pointer -- being only 8 bits wide.} The whole display subsystem {including text, graphics, user-defined characters, display windows and colour/palette selection} was controlled by non-printable characters {and the graphics display was organised as 1280x1024, even though in real life it was only 160/320/640x256}. There was, of course, a MOS call to print a character. Every other piece of hardware -- the sound system, the keyboard, the printer, the serial port, the A-to-D converter, the cassette and disc file systems -- could be accessed through MOS calls. You didn't have to touch the hardware directly at all; in fact, as long as you didn't, the same programs {in BASIC or machine code} would work without modification on a plain Model B, a B with a 6502 second processor, a Master Series or a RISC-based machine with 6502 emulation. BBC BASIC was merely a layer on top of the MOS. For instance, the Beeb's sound chip had a programmable envelope generator controlled by 14 parameters. There was a MOS call which took a block of 14 parameters and loaded these into the sound chip's registers. The ENVELOPE statement in BASIC took 14 parameters, and merely made the MOS call for you.
Re:6502 (Score:2)
Re:6502 (Score:3, Interesting)
Thanks for posting. I taught myself 6502 machine code when I was 12 years old. My computer came with a photocopied sheet with the instruction set documented on it, one instruction per line.
The instruction set design made sense, and my first program was 16 bytes long. I can't imagine doing that with a Z80.
Re:6502 (Score:2)
On the Spectrum, it was pretty easy to write a variant tape loader using parts of the ROM. I'm pretty sure a basic headerless loader was about 17 bytes.
Certainly, I remember my GCSE project was a 27 byte printer interface driver that fit into the designated space with 4 bytes to spare (I was hacking a pre-existing commercial word processor package for which no source code was available).
Re:6502 (Score:2, Funny)
ld ix,16384
ld de,6912
ld a,255
scf
call 1366
ret
(written entirely from memory, and posted anonymously to avoid revealing my sad bastard identity)
Re:6502 (Score:2, Interesting)
That's a feature that designer Chuck Peddle lifted from the 6809 (which he also worked on). The 6809 allows you to relocate this page as well as the stack.
65816 (Score:2)
The best part for me was mapping the zero-page onto the framebuffer (it was in bank 1), and then using the stack as my blitter.
Compile sprites into asm code, and then push push push #immediate all day baby!
Re:6502 (Score:5, Interesting)
As AJS said, the 6502 was the inspiration for the ARM family, and RISC processors in general. The philosophy is why encumber a CPU with complex instructions that take several CPU cycles to execute, when a decent compiler can get the same work done with an optimised set of small instructions that execute in just one or two CPU cycles?
ARM was in fact an off-shoot from Acorn, the company that made the BBC Micro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture [wikipedia.org] It continues to amaze me that the first ARM prototype CPU back from the fabrication plant worked perfectly first time!
Re:6502 (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe if ARM had 9 pipelines like AMD64 it'd be hella fast too
Tom
Re:6502 (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone who knows more about this??
Re:6502 (Score:4, Informative)
With ARM style RISC opcodes operations heavy on memory [for example] are less dense than those of x86. e.g.
x86:
add eax,[ebx+ecx]
ARM: [map them to r0,r1,r2]
add r3,r1,r2 ; ebx + ecx
ldr r3,[r3] ; [ebx+ecx]
add r0,r0,r3
So the x86 world takes 3 bytes to do what ARM takes 12 [or 6 in THUMB mode]. Multiply this by a few hundred if not thousand for any given algorithm and you get the point.
Effectively the opcode decoders act like decompressors for x86 opcodes. Done on the fly for most opcodes. Of course in the case of AMD64 [and most likely the Core 2 stuff] most opcodes map to 1 or 2 RISC operations. The RISC engines are not as trivial as those in the ARM processor alone. So even if you scrapped the x86 side and exposed the internal engine it'd still be way cooler than ARM.
Tom
Re:6502 (Score:2)
The niche for ARM is the MIPS/watt tradeoff. It can get you a couple hundred MIPS for FAR LESS power usage than any x86 processor [specially for the later ARM processors with internal caches].
Tom
Re:6502 (Score:2)
Re:6502 (Score:2)
Re:6502 (Score:2)
And Bender.
Re:6502 (Score:2)
680x0 all the way man! 68k rules!
The article is a little too quick to praise (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The article is a little too quick (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The article is a little too quick (Score:2)
Since I've been having fun with Latin lately, here's my review of the article: Like, fac me cocleario vomere!
Beginner friendly? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nowadays, does it really matter what type of unix-like system is being run for home use? Once a desktop management environment (KDE, GNOME, etc.) is installed there's really no difference to the casual user. Hell, with that pretty KDE interface, I can't tell the difference between Linux, BSD, Darwin, Solaris, etc until I open a terminal and type "uname -a"
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:5, Insightful)
He explained his position, in no uncertain terms:
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
You forgot to include his disclaimer: IF PC-BSD came pre-installed...THEN it becomes an alternative to Windows.
That's a mighty big IF right there. But there is little evidence that the semi-experienced Windows user has any interest in migration whatever.
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
True, but that was only because the installer currently isn't bug-free. When that's improved, the "if" will be gone.
That's an entirely seperate subject, but I've seen enough incredibly frustrated Windows users to be sure there's a big market.
BSD's new signs of life (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
No, it's a small difference.
Most people recognize that companies very often need to be able to stop/restrict/limit the distribution of their changes, or will be effectively unable to use the software in the first place.
Even RMS (the most opinionated guy I've ever talked with) will usually acknowledge that is an issue, and suggest less restrictive licenses in some cases.
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
No. Very few companies actually need to do this. Often managers will claim to "need" to do this, when in reality they're simply being more restrictive because it's slightly cheaper and sometimes less risky to do so than to pay people to do a proper release. These managers will prefer BSD-licensed software to GPL-li
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
BSD is exactly that: GNU + Linux, but without the GPL.
And it didn't kill propfejjklfdjkldfry software yet.
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:3, Informative)
You do know that M$ used BSD-licenced code for their IP stack and Internet Explorer, don't you?
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
That's false, unfortunately. If it did things would have been much better for all.
Nitpick details: ftp.exe is not "IP stack". IE might use BSDL software like zlib & others, hardly an important design or security part. I used zlib as an example, don't stick to it.
Re:BSD facilitates forking (Score:2)
Linus wrote the linux kernel for desktop use. Instead its used on servers and slo
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
Linux vs. FreeBSD, in many many ways FreeBSD was obviously better at earlier points. I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that FreeBSD "won".
wuftpd vs. vsftpd, wuftpd is a custom BSD like license (pretty common with "BSD") ... again wuftpd failed and had decades unopposed.
Xt vs. gtk+,
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
Which branch of unix is in use in the most places right now? Remember Apple when you consider your answer. FreeBSD? No. BSD? Yes, actually I think it has. It's got the server market and it's got the end user market. The hobbyist market will come around.
wuftpd vs. vsftpd, wuftpd is a custom BSD like license (pretty common with "BSD")
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
Give me a break. Firstly, GTK+ is not the same thing as GNOME. Secondly, GTK+ is and has been available free for Win32 for years. I recently wrote a Python program that used GTK and Glade [sourceforge.net] for a project I was working on. The program ran out of the box (with all the dependencies installed, of course) on Debian and Win32, and I chos
GPL as capitalist weapon (Score:2)
My own work is pretty small-scale (a handful of licensees), but there are bigger companies that do this. Another scenari
Re:BSD's new signs of life (Score:2)
The article is of very poor quality. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The article is of very poor quality. (Score:2)
Hardware Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hardware Support (Score:2)
My point is, don't blame the software for lacking hardware support. N
Re:Hardware Support (Score:2)
Re:Hardware Support (Score:2)
I figured if I had to do everything by hand, I might as well do everything by hand on an operating system I'm familiar with. So I installed FreeBSD.
I'm not ragging on Ubuntu. I'm ragging on the damned manufacturers and their Windows only cra
Re:Hardware Support (Score:3, Interesting)
You can expect FreeBSD to support 99% of the hardware that works under Linux. And actually, it will generally be more stable under FreeBSD than under Linux.
The BSDs practically never even SUGGEST recompiling the kernel, even though it's quicker and easier than in Linux land. Everything is always compiled-in, and very much unlike Linux, the system is fully Plug-and-Play. Everythin
It is a very superficial article (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're looking for a stable non-MS distribution for people who are basically looking for Office, photo management, Internet, one of these is probably the simplest fastest and most user friendly way to get there.
ummmm no? (Score:2)
Re:ummmm no? (Score:2)
Man, won't you be embarrassed when you try it? Oh right, you won't bother to check. Nevermind.
Benefits of BSD? (Score:3, Interesting)
So to all of you who might use this, or some other flavor of BSD as a desktop, what advantages does it offer over Linux? What are the disadvantages (other than the momentum that Linux has as a desktop OS compared to BSD)?
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing you will notice is that the BSD documentation is a lot better. When I am working on a Linux box, I usually have an SSH session open to a BSD box for checking man pages. OpenBSD tends to be the best in this regard; any code commit must include a documentation update if it changes anything user-visible, and any discrepancy between the code and the documentation is regarded as a bug in the code.
Overall, I think I prefer OpenBSD these days, but it doesn't support DRI yet so I'd recommend FreeBSD for the desktop (or SMP systems, since OpenBSD's SMP support is about where FreeBSD was with the 4.x series).
Basically, you should try it and see if you like it. Give it a while; I've seen Linux users give up on *BSD because 'it doesn't work right' meaning 'it isn't exactly the same as Linux.'
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:4, Informative)
First and foremost, read the handbook. This cannot be overstated. http://www1.uk.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/bo
Bear in mind that, for a Linux user, FreeBSD will appear to behave most like Gentoo, particularly when building applications from ports. The actual inheritance was the other way around, but that hardly matters to this discussion.
The kernel config file is flat text, with the various options described in detail in the ${SRC}/sys/conf/NOTES and ${SRC}/sys/${ARCH}/NOTES files. Once you get used to it, nothing ever comes close to the ease of compiling new kernels IMHO. Just watch what depends on what, especially the COMPAT_??? options. Also, try not to use "custom" compiler flags like -ffast-math and -funroll-loops as you can end up with hard to diagnose problems when building from source.
Oh, and for anyone reading this thread who is saying "I only have one dsp device that gets locked and nothing else can use it," there is a sysctl knob which needs setting: hw.snd.pcm?.vchans which I usually set to 4 in
There's a lot of help to be had on the Usenet group comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc, too.
My last word on the subject is this: If you have an amd64 machine, for now I would use the i386 port (CPUTYPE=athlon64 in
By the way, ports count at present is ~15500. That's 15.5 thousand services, applications, libraries and utilities available for the cost of typing "make install clean".
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed. I wouldn't expect it to be such a draw now, but it is just a concrete example of the attention to detail of the BSD teams.
I can see how a more unified system would appeal to most people. It was never something that particularly bugged me, since I guess I'm still in the mindset of seeing a collection of util
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Commandline utilities generally work, but they're a lot pickier than Linux ones. For instance, I'll often type 'rm foo', and then remember that foo is a directory, and tack a '-rf' onto the end of it -- except that this rm insists on having it
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:3, Funny)
You don't have to deal with the linux fans
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Anyone who wants a minimal Linux install should take a look at Arch Linux. It's an i686 distro with a KISS philosophy. The base install size is around 300 MB iirc (similar to a basic BSD installation, I gather) and includes only what you need to get up and running: a kernel and basic userland, including an excellen
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Can Arch do that? I mean, I'm sure it's got desktop stuff, but how many apps does pacman really have?
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
I think there are around 7000 packages in Arch's repos, not including unsupported user-submitted packages in what's called the AUR. Arch's repos are pretty good, meaning that most of the things I want are in there. Certainly enough to build a solid system. I'm not suggesting that Arch is a perfect fit for everyone, but since we were talking about minimal base installations, I thought it was worth mentioning. I suppo
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
But I like Gnome more than KDE. (Yes, I know that Linus T. despises me now.) PC-BSD is a KDE-based distribution.
There's enough buggy software in the world to waste your whole life.
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
After 5.4 on, and 6.0 on are quite dandy.
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Amigo, I was using 5.2 Release, 5.3 Release, and 5.4 Release. Is that what you call "early adoption"?
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Suffering because of "early adoption", apparently... but that's my own fault in your esteemed opinion. It was my first experience with FreeBSD and I didn't know that 5.x release versions were bad news. Here's a quotation from elsewhere in this thread:
"The amount of development and change that went on between 4.X and 5.X is now widely accepted to have been a bad idea."
I'm willing to believe that 6.x is much better. But I'm also not going to be rebuilding my server anyti
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:2)
Your sig (Score:2)
When your electronics smell, it's usually not a good thing.
Re:Benefits of BSD? (Score:3, Informative)
Beginner friendly is... (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe they should do a test... 20 beginners with no computer experience or familiarity, that would use this operating system, and e.g. Mac OS X, plain installed FreeBSD and XP, and see what they think is really the easiest to use. The beginners would be way better to tell this than someone who makes their living writing computer related articles.
Re:Beginner friendly is... (Score:2)
If you've watched a beginner with no computer experience, you will quickly find that requirng them to plug things into it is a challenge in itself.
It is possible for somebody knowledgeable to setup a BSD, and presumably Linux, based computer to kick off various programs when a USB device is attached and stop the program when the device is detached (usbd.conf). Watching for the lid opening on a scanner would require something special.
Re:Beginner friendly is... (Score:2)
Left entirely on their own, probably OS X beats Kubuntu by a hair.
With people coaching them, obviously it depends on the quality of the coaches, but I suspect it would be between Ubuntu, Gentoo, and OS X. Gentoo has by far the best community to help you, OS X is definitely the easiest to start with, but Ubuntu will probably be both easy to set up and easy to maintain -- OS X becomes a maintenance nightmare without a package manager.
If these pe
Re:Beginner friendly is... (Score:2)
Mac OS X - doesn't install at all (no Apple hardware).
XP - installs, no sound, network, or CD access.
FreeBSD - actually installs and does something.
Don't need the other 19 people, I guess. And, why IS installing taken to be a Rosetta Stone, anyway?
Ratboy
Re:Beginner friendly is... (Score:3, Funny)
Because in the Windows world it's the single most frequent task.
Limits to the Compatiblity Layer (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Limits to the Compatiblity Layer (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Limits to the Compatiblity Layer (Score:2)
PCBSD is good (Score:3, Informative)
BSD = i am not dead
Next Gen OS (Score:4, Funny)
Beginner friendly? (Score:4, Insightful)
What I would like to see - though perhaps it is too much to hope for - is an interface where you could 'change gears', so to speak, from 'beginner' to 'experienced' to 'advanced' to 'bloody-know-it-all'; the beginner mode should have wizards, few options, easy, catoon-style documentation and bright, but calming colours, whereas the most advanced level would have none of the dumbing-down and would have complete, technical documentation of absolutely all features, options and parameters - no wizards, just vi and text-based parameter files.
Yes, I know, Linux is not too far from this by now, but technical documentation is still severely lacking in some areas, most notoriously when it comes to the GNOME desktop. In fact, it is so bad that I think the GNOME developers should freeze their development until they have produced proper, technical documentation of their SW.
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
It exists, but it's not as useful as you'd think. Try the Xine UI, go to preferences, they have settings from "Beginner" to "Master of the Known Universe". And I'm not making it up -- I mean, you actually hit a dropdown, and there is a "Master of the Known Universe" setting.
But once you figure out how to know what you know -- once you figure out how to know which settings you'r
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
A linux configuration tool that shows *both* the nice friendly GUI with checkboxes, radio buttons, etc., AND the raw config file that the GUI is actually editing, updated in realtime -- so you can SEE what the checkbox just altered in the config file, and have a chance to learn about the various settings on the fly.
And let the user pick if they want to see one, the other, or both configuration methods.
This system is ho
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
If you're going to be editing the raw config file at all, every config file I've seen supports comments of some sort, so you should be able to figure it out on your own. What you'd want to be seeing is the actual effect (which isn't always visible), not just some checkboxes.
There are some tools, though, which do this the full-on Mac way, where the GUI tools usually affect everything in realtime, and the config changes are saved without asking you -- all you get is a revert b
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
As to comments in config files, they're too often written in programmerspeak, which is frequently backwards of how everyone else thinks, because of the nature of sourcecode-style yes/no statements. And very often they use terms that mean something to an experienced user, but nothing at all to a novice. Tho this does give me the idea th
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
I don't see why showing a checkbox that says "You said 'ye
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
That's exactly the point I'm trying to make. If the GUI shows you the possible options, and *simultaneously* you can see what each option actually *does* to the config file itself, then you can "learn by doing" the syntax without trying to puzzle it out in the abstract (by RTFM'ing, which rarely works for newbies -- they simply don't have anything to relate the
Re: (Score:2)
# Hi, I'm explaining the following
# option, and I'm in a different color.
# I don't look like code at all.
foo="bar"
That's pretty much it. And a good sample config file -- often used as a config file -- shows you all the possible options, and simultaneously explains what they do to the program itself. You can learn by doing and reading through the config file, although it helps a lot to unders
Re: (Score:2)
I support and train enough new users (and I don't mean kids who are eager to dig thru the guts) to have become quite aware of this. They can RTFM all da
Re: (Score:2)
And dabbling below the surface of a Linux desktop, just about anything that would be graphical at all is already handled. What's left boils down to whether it really makes a meaningful difference for people to have a GUI versus a config file, for a program which has no GUI. So, for instance, you're saying we need a GUI for fstab?
Actually
Re:Beginner friendly? (Score:2)
Please (Score:5, Interesting)
The dude put like 3 sentences per "page" and doesn't let you skip far into the article [hint, the dropdown says "...continue" so you can't just jump ahead to the conclusions and what not]. I stopped reading it after the 2nd page.
If [next] this [next] is [next] the [next] future [next] of [next] journalism [next] then [next] I [next] fear [next] for [next] our [next] future.
Tom
Re:Please (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Please (Score:2)
I agree with you in general (Tom's Hardware is the worst), but this one really wasn't very bad. About a screen and a half full of text per page (a LOT more than 3 sentences) and only split over 4 pages.
The 10+ page hardware review sites are the real nightmare.
Caffeine (Score:3, Funny)
Wouldn't it feel slower? Like Fry running around that museum?
So I skipped the article and went straight... (Score:3, Informative)
So it might be worth an install just to check out the system. Looks clean, they tout that it's fast, but I want to look for it myself. Will install this weekend on my Laptop and see if it really detects hardware like they say.
Skip the article, go to the website.
http://www.pcbsd.org/ [pcbsd.org]
Where's the torrent? (Score:2)
Re:The mistake is KDE as window manager (Score:2)