History of pcbsd?

[fran]

Is there a link to a web page, archive or article that talks about the history of pcbsd?

In particular I don't quite understand it's relation to FreeBSD.
Is it a whole new OS? An installer for FreeBSD?

[pcbsdusr]

It's an installer for FreeBSD with kde and a custom pre-packaged, self contained software package installation utillty.

It's ment to become a desktop/workstation ready freebsd installation.

So you have a pretty face with some powerful deamon underneath! :D

All FreeBSD features are under the hood.

Cheers!

Renato Flórido

[fran]

It's an installer for FreeBSD with kde and a custom pre-packaged, self contained software package installation utillty.
.....
Renato Flórido

Thanks for the info.
Silly question then...
How come it became a separate project instead of trying to get the code into the main FreeBSD codebase?

[scottro]

As they say, don't ask the question and trade a few minutes of embarrassment for a lifetime of ignorance.

Anyway, FreeBSD is still more of a server oriented O/S. The devlopers will spend most of their time on that aspect.

In a recent interview with Scott Long and company, the FreeBSD developers said that they thought it was a good thing. Will any code get merged into the FreeBSD tree eventually? Who knows, let's get it out of beta first, then talk about it.

This is basically FreeBSD under the hood, and if you wish, you can use it that way. However, the FreeBSD team is still directing their efforts in the direction of a server, though many of us succesfully use FreeBSD as a desktop.

[DrJ]

Let me expand on this a bit.

The FreeBSD team develops an operating system and sees to it that open-source software (in source and binary forms) is ported to the platform. The development, as Scottro says, is driven primarily by the needs of the server community. That's a good thing, actually, as robust, high-performance operation is more important for servers than for desktops (for example).

What they don't do is integrate a system. If you want to run a web server, for example, they expect that you know enough to set up Apache, do the internet connections, set up jails and the right logs, do the back-ups, and so forth. They don't make it hard to do. Rather, they assume that you know what you are doing to get your web server set up. All of the tools are there.

It is the same for the desktop. All of the pieces are there, from X11 to desktop environments, to java and flash (subject to license restrictions) and everything else. They also provide a means to keep the system up-to-date, though it can be a bit intimidating on the first few go-rounds.

It turns out that setting up and maintaining a good FreeBSD desktop is a LOT of work (ask me how I know!). You have to become familiar enough with quite a number of arcane things to get it working the way you would expect. It is not particularly hard, but it does take a lot of time and web searching (and sifting through conflicting or out-of-date information), and honestly, most desktop users are not really interested in that.

That's where PC-BSD comes in. This project is attempting to provide the "glue" between all of the tools that are available, and make it easy for a user to set up, get running and keep running. It also provides user programs packaged in a form that can reduce system dependencies that can be rather inconvenient.

I've speculated before that what PC-BSD does will not be included in FreeBSD per se. That is just not what FreeBSD is about, nor the focus of the effort. That said, both the terms of the BSD license and the personality of the development team lead me to believe that they will welcome the PC-BSD effort. Everything I've read or heard to date support that speculation. Now it may well happen that the PC-BSD "package" is provided in the FreeBSD ports system down the road. In the scheme of things, I think that is a detail.

DrJ