What apps do people need urgently?

[David30]

I'm satisfied with PC-BSD and it never misbehaves at all. I know I can test the beta releases without worrying. If many millions of people discovered PC-BSD and it became as popular as Ubuntu was (and still is), what apps would your "home" computer user really need?

Here's are 4 obvious ones:

• Skype
• Google Earth
• DVD Playback
• Steam gaming

I've excluded the very obvious ones from the list, like mp3 playback, TrueType fonts and Java; maybe these could come pre-installed?

In the real world, the everyday "home" user will need these kind of apps. If only Linux versions are available, it's important that these can be made to work perfectly in BSD.

What apps do you think are very important, to allow users to stick with PC-BSD and not go back to Windows or Ubuntu?

[thnewguy]

One of the things that keeps me coming back to Ubuntu for desktop usage is the One service. Ubuntu One is really handy, especially with their Thunderbird integration. It makes sending and sharing large fiels really handy, but the service is pretty closely tired to Ubuntu. I tried porting it a while back, but the code and installation processes for One are really non-standard and tied to the platform.

But the main thing is hardware support. I find PC-BSD and FreeBSD don't support as much hardware as other OSes. So when they work, they work really well, but on about 7/10th of the machines I try PC-BSD on it simply doesn't work (won't boot). Each release gets better, but the biggest hurdle for me getting PC-BSD on new machines is hardware compatibility.

[purgatori]

There's only one app I really care about: Emacs.

It would be nice to have a working version of Skype available, though.

[fluca1978]

Each user has his own set of applications. I guess the most popular ones already runs under PCBSD/FreeBSD (e.g., mozilla's, gnu's).

As stated in other threads, the problem with applications is that they have maintainers, and threrefore the right path for a not working application is usually to get to such maintainers and work with them.

[David30]

I understand that things are meant to be done "slower" in BSD to ensure things are done properly and done right first time? I'm more than happy to wait a few months longer for hardware drivers and for apps, if that means they will work properly, rather than being rushed, partially working and buggy. This is exactly what Ubuntu did with Unity and there were endless bug reports from users about broken apps caused by Unity!

[fluca1978]

I understand that things are meant to be done "slower" in BSD to ensure things are done properly and done right first time? I'm more than happy to wait a few months longer for hardware drivers and for apps, if that means they will work properly, rather than being rushed, partially working and buggy. This is exactly what Ubuntu did with Unity and there were endless bug reports from users about broken apps caused by Unity!

While this is surely true for most of us and it is the nature of BSD, it is not what I was referring to.
Again, pick up the skype example. Who is responsible for fixing it? The PCBSD team? I don't think so, unless someone has time to work on it. The FreeBSD team? I guess so, in particular the skype maintaner. It could turn out it is a linux compat problem, so it should be fixed with that team and maintaner. It does not suffice to get a list of apps that work on another platform and have PCBSD made them working automagically. PCBSD is a FreeBSD based distribution, this means that a lot of customization is built around FreeBSD in order to not re-invent the wheel. This does not mean PCBSD cannot fix a single application, it was that for nvidia drivers, but a single application is, in my opinion, not worthing.

[David30]

Fewer apps and drivers are preventing many people from permanently switching to PC-BSD. Most users stick with Windows, not because it's the best and most secure OS, but it can run the most apps and hardware.

Whoever can make apps like Skype work in PC-BSD, I hope they consider how many more users would use PC-BSD (or FreeBSD) and more users = more testers; if those users happen to be programmers, you have more programmers to make things even better.

[Abdul]

Fewer apps and drivers are preventing many people from permanently switching to PC-BSD. Most users stick with Windows, not because it's the best and most secure OS, but it can run the most apps and hardware.

QFT!

BTW, limiting message length is counterproductive.

[David30]

Thanks.

If anyone reading this message knows how to make apps work on PC-BSD/FreeBSD, it's a good idea to get the "important" apps working which users need most often. As an example: today, I needed to use Google Earth, so I had to reboot (actually shutdown) from PC-BSD just to use Google Earth in Ubuntu. I'm happy to do that when necessary, however newcomers would find that too inconvenient and they will pursue the "lazy" option and go back to using Windows (or Ubuntu?) instead of waiting for apps to be ported to PC-BSD.

Consider the most important apps like Google Earth and getting Skype to work. I'm sure other readers can list a few more apps, but it's sensible to keep the list short, to about 10 "must have" apps.

[Peter2121]

+1 for Skype and Google Earth, it is really important to get them working.
There is a workaround for Skype (2.0 version still works) but nothing for Google Earth