Please dont repeate the linux mistakes

[rooten]

I never considered unixes as something which is useful as a desktop computer but I was testing different linux distributions from time to time. One of most annoying "features" were:

- literally no backward compatibility, in next minor there could be a change which broke your software, the freebsd as a system will solve a part of this annoyance but there is still a major part on X. Try to stay consistent with config files, even if you need to make additional configuration layer where all options are set and then translated to specific part of "add on" software like KDE. Dont mess with the freebsd structure and leave it compatible with corresponding freebsd release.
- complete mess regarding the configuration files, something like listen setting in once config file and then no-listen turned on on the other side of the system (xdmcp in this case) is something which can piss off also the most resilient user.
- i think that the magic of android actually is preventing applications to mess around the system. Java engine isolated them in a sandbox solving multiple problems, including backward compatibility (if the google keeps dalvik backward compatible, the applications will be backward compatible too). Imho this is the way to go and maybe modified jail could be used to isolate the X applications as far away from the system as possible. But not a lightweight task...

I think that the keyword would be: be consistent between versions as much as possible as cutting corners produce a mess where linux distributions are now.

Anyway i dont think that pc-bsd is usefull for desktop use at the moment.

[Artchi]

Of course there are many issues with FreeBSD und PC-BSD on desktop, special in multimedia! But PC-BSD is good as an office system.

I am a Windows user since 15 years and I from time to time I try Linux distris and FreeBSD. They both did a very good evolution for office use.

There is also some issue with stand-by (suspend to RAM) and hibernate to disk. This works in OpenSUSE much better on my PC. Playing DVD-videos is horrible on PC-BSD.

But web browsing, Flash, text and calculation (office) and 2D/3D graphics is very good!


The compatibility issue: Windows has its success because of compatibility. I can run most Win NT 4 (v. 4.0) apps without recompile on Win 7 (v. 6.1). Thats very good!

The good thing about PC-BSD is that its just a FreeBSD. Its not incompatible to FreeBSD. PC-BSD is only a preconfigured FreeBSD for Desktop users. And thats great! :)

[rvc]

i am enjoying my pcbsd experience. as of now apart from office apps, video and sound are working well too. related to skype, i could configure the test call for skype where speakers are working fine but mic is not picking up the voice...
well that problem will be solved too.... i think !

i was using windows and ubuntu and mint a lot where almost all apps worked out of the box. Arch needed similar tweaking as pcbsd. (Arch needs to be built from scratch and we have what we need and we do not install what we do not need (thanks to the wonderful "pacman" ). my current Arch is always the latest and thank goodness, i have not found any problems on the softwares that are already running !

PC-BSD too seem to be heading in that direction, only thing is it takes way too long for any software to be installed !

in a way, the learning curve is surely bound to grow using these wonderful solid OSes...