Hari's Corner

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DesktopBSD: a review

Filed under: Software and Technology by Hari
Posted on Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 19:07 IST (last updated: Thu, May 7, 2009 @ 21:10 IST)

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In the past, I've tried FreeBSD on my system on a few occasions only to be put off by several serious hurdles. First of all, FreeBSD is not a GUI based BSD, meaning that its learning curve is quite steep. One would think that a fairly decent Linux user like me would be comfortable with the BSD command line. But that is not so. Because, the BSD shell uses sh by default and not bash and therefore feels a bit awkward to those who are used to the tab-autocompletion. This sounds like a small thing, but believe me, it was really awkward to work inside the BSD shell. Another factor which confuses a Linux user further is the new device naming scheme (like when we had to get rid of the C: prompt from our minds when we first learnt Linux) and of course, various other factors like configuration file locations, settings related to xorg which worked differently in *BSD, the package management system and of course ports. All said and done, it proved to be a mighty intimidating experience for even a fairly experienced Linux user.

Well, I asked myself. What is the best way to start learning BSD? As I have mentioned in the past, I am a firm believer in accumulating as much knowledge as possible and BSD is only the logical step forward from Linux. Well, for any newbie from Windows, SUSE Linux is a perfect choice. A similar choice in BSD is of course, DesktopBSD. I downloaded the DVD ISO image from here.

DesktopBSD is not a fork from FreeBSD, but rather it is a customized, desktop-oriented installation of FreeBSD with a nice, graphical installation. The installation is fairly simple although the lack of package selection is a minus. It installs the entire DVD onto your hard disk and though this is good for newbies, it can be a limiting factor for more experienced users. Of course, I must add that the experienced BSD users would probably not use DesktopBSD in the first place. There is another limitation when it comes to installing BSD and that is, it requires a primary partition to install into and will not install into any logical partitions like Linux, which might be a problem for some users.

As far as GUI is concerned, DesktopBSD uses KDE, which is a nice choice for most users since other desktops can be limited on a BSD system. KDE is a safe, good choice for any *nix and particularly BSD since BSD by itself can be intimidating and KDE can help soften the learning curve somewhat by providing at least a familiar desktop to work on.

Hardware detection is quite good - if anything, far better than some Linux distros I can think of. DesktopBSD autodetected all my network interfaces and my onboard nForce sound, so little, if any configuration was required on that front. It's also quite easy to graphically edit your network card settings. (stuff like IP address, netmask, gateway, DNS etc. etc.). It also has a graphical package manager front end for the binary and source package management on BSD. Getting started is a lot, lot easier this way. In general, DesktopBSD seems to be a lot friendlier than vanilla FreeBSD on many fronts. I especially like the fact that server elements are left out of this OS making plenty of room for the desktop goodies. It comes with a much bigger KDE menu than FreeBSD by default and that's a good thing. Most of your familiar Linux applications can be found there.

All in all, what are my impressions of DesktopBSD? It's a great way to begin the BSD journey. It reminds me of SUSE in many ways, particularly the friendly graphical configuration tools (although it doesn't have as many tools as SUSE has in YaST). If DesktopBSD grows as a project, I can see a great future for BSD as a desktop alternative to Linux, although I'd assume that the availability of hardware device drivers for BSD might not be as comprehensive as in Linux right now. Even so, DesktopBSD has a great start. I, for one, will be keenly watching the development of BSD over the next few years.

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5 comment(s)

  1. I too tried Desktop BSD once, but my love for FreeBSD is undying :) The compulsion to install onto a primary partition, though, has plagued BSD for long. About time ther give this a serious thought.You should probably consider including some screenshots in your reviews, or maybe give links to the screenshots over at osdir, etc.Cheers!

    Comment by linuxlala (visitor) on Tue, Apr 11, 2006 @ 20:42 IST #
  2. LinuxLala, yeah, I should be posting desktop screenshots, but I'm too lazy to do that. Anyway, I can post links if you want, but they have a good collection at the official site anyway, so I thought, why bother? :PThanks for the feedback.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Apr 11, 2006 @ 20:54 IST #
  3. I agree. Just that a review with quick links helps the reader that much more. You and I can look for screenshots, but the new users (who are probably hearing about BSD for the first time) would appreciate the links.As we say on forum boards, just my 2 cents :)

    Comment by linuxlala (visitor) on Tue, Apr 11, 2006 @ 23:11 IST #
  4. Linux-&gt;BSD is like Windows-&gt;Linux: The more used to the former, the harder it is to use the latterMy GF actually tends to do better with FreeBSD than I do, because of this.I always wonder how hard it would be for other OSes, such as BSD, to add functionality to use Linux modules: If this were do-able, BSD would presumably be able to install on any hardware that Linux too would support. Haven't seen it mentioned anywhere online tho..

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on Tue, Apr 11, 2006 @ 23:36 IST #
  5. Yeah, although I did find this page quite useful.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Wed, Apr 12, 2006 @ 06:39 IST #

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