[HN Gopher] HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD
___________________________________________________________________
HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD
Author : gautamcgoel
Score : 157 points
Date : 2023-08-25 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hellosystem.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (hellosystem.github.io)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| See also Elementary OS and its Pantheon desktop environment.
| NuSkooler wrote:
| A long while back there were efforts to port Pantheon to
| FreeBSD. IMO, a coordinated effort to get the graphical and UX
| experience on Linux or FreeBSD would be better than yet another
| one.
|
| I do wonder about eOS staff issues. It would be a shame to see
| that fall apart, I've been using it for years. Even so, someone
| picking up the torch as it were would be better than starting
| another.
| jwells89 wrote:
| ElementaryOS is very polished aesthetically and I love that
| they didn't jump aboard the "flat rectangles and monochrome
| icons" bandwagon like everybody else, but the way they went
| along with the various functionality-limiting GNOME conventions
| like replacing proper menubars with hamburger menus and hiding
| the minimize button is disappointing.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Still better than GNOME
| rollcat wrote:
| So much effort goes into badly cloning another desktop these
| days.
|
| I like macOS for the attention to detail, not for the rounded
| corners.
|
| I like X11 for the flexibility, not for the ability to poorly
| imitate another system.
|
| I will give credit to GNOME for trying to be their own thing,
| but it seems like they have no real vision, except trying to
| be "simpler" at all costs.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Has ElementaryOS gotten their staff problems fixed yet?
|
| I'm also annoyed that they don't go for Objective C which could
| make a lot of seasoned Apple developers comfortable, but
| instead went for a custom language.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Then take a look at GnuStep or WindowMaker.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Window Maker does not use GNUstep or Objective-C at all, it
| is all written in plain C. In fact the UI toolkit it uses
| (developed for Window Maker itself) is called "WINGs" for
| "WINGs Is Not GNUstep".
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > custom language
|
| Vala wasn't a custom language for elementaryOS, it already
| existed for years before the first version of the OS (and i
| _think_ the first version didn 't use any Vala code).
|
| It most likely used instead of Objective-C because its object
| system was built on top of glib's gobject system and
| elementaryOS used Gtk and a lot of other glib/gobject-based
| libraries. Using Objective-C would mean they'd have to base
| their UI on GNUstep and GNUstep wasn't as polished as Gtk.
|
| Remember that while they used macOS as an inspiration, it was
| never elementaryOS's goal to make a macOS clone.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Of course they could have used GTK from ObjectiveC, in fact
| it has been proposed.
| egypturnash wrote:
| My first question, as an artist who's been using a Mac for 23
| years, is: why? Why would I want to switch to this? Why would I
| want to hassle with buying a random PC and installing this on
| when I can just keep using a Mac? I expect the same level of
| bullshit out of that experience as, say, the way my Windows-using
| husband has been trained to never put his machine to sleep by
| decades of unreliable sleep behavior.
|
| There is a link in the front page text to a much uglier,
| unprofessional-looking page on Github that has a lengthy answer
| to that which seems to boil down to "Privacy", if you actually
| want to try and pitch this to non-programmes then summarize that
| shit down to a couple of sentences and have a link to a page that
| goes into more detail that actually has some CSS on it.
|
| My second question is: how well does the Adobe suite run on it?
| I've been using Illustrator as my main medium for as long as I've
| been using a Mac, I have zero desire to start fresh in terms of
| customizing, scripting, and configuring Inkscape.
|
| Typing "adobe" into the search bar of the site returns no results
| so given the "why you should use this" page I'm gonna assume the
| answer is "[a twenty minute rant on why you should be using Free
| Software instead, with a lengthy sidebar on the differences
| between free, Free, and 'free']". Or maybe if you're lucky "well
| WINE mostly works if you fiddle with it enough".
|
| My third question is: why are the menu names in the front page
| screenshot in German, with a menu in English?
|
| I'll stick to Apple's fork of FreeBSD, thanks.
| nawfalak wrote:
| I feel like you're looking a bit too much into it and that this
| rant is a bit unnecessary. You write as though you're being
| attacked by the creators or something. It's not going to
| "replace your MacOS" or anything, but rather is a showcase of
| clean UI and UX. Looking through the "What" and "Why" sections
| on their Github says how it follows certain UI and UX
| guidelines; many of which Apple has adopted. I don't think
| you're the target audience either. If you're interested in
| FreeBSD and like MacOS, you'd probably love this.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I'm critiquing the presentation.
|
| "helloSystem is a desktop system for creators with a focus on
| simplicity, elegance, and usability. Its design follows the
| "Less, but better" philosophy. It is intended as a system for
| "mere mortals", welcoming to switchers from the Mac."
|
| Sounds like I'm somewhere near the target audience if you ask
| me.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Well for one you do not need to buy expensive Mac
| hardware......that seems like a pretty damn big selling
| point.
| stonogo wrote:
| Typing "adobe" into the search bar of apple.com returns a bunch
| of external hard drives. I think your analysis is off.
|
| Seems to me you're an Adobe user more than a Mac user, and
| there's nothing wrong with that. Not every project needs to
| target you.
| [deleted]
| sleiben wrote:
| You're probably not the target group. It's an open source
| project (in comparison to the MacOS walled garden) and I think
| that especially your 3rd question is disrespectful. In general
| your comment reads like a rant against the open source
| philosophy to me and is attacking/demotivating people who spend
| their spare time to create free software. Instead of attacking
| OSS creators one should give kudos and encourage them to go on.
| ... just my 5 cents.
| egypturnash wrote:
| "helloSystem is a desktop system for creators with a focus on
| simplicity, elegance, and usability. Its design follows the
| "Less, but better" philosophy. It is intended as a system for
| "mere mortals", welcoming to switchers from the Mac."
|
| I think I am kind of _exactly_ the target group.
|
| Why is "why is half of the screenshot used as my first
| encounter with this system in a different language from the
| rest" a disrespectful question?
| skyyler wrote:
| >Why would I want to switch to this?
|
| Because you value free software. That's the only reason.
|
| It's a very compelling reason for many people. If it's not
| compelling for you, that's ok.
| jjrh wrote:
| A lot of people care about software freedom? To the point where
| they will use a (currently) worse tool.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| Mac OS currently has no enterprise usable file sharing, for
| starters. The Samba driver is garbage and AFP is maintained by
| third parties. Etc. The Mac OS has uses, but they are VASTLY
| fewer in number than Linux or Windows. Why does anyone make new
| stuff? To solve problems, or serve needs and desires.
| ketralnis wrote:
| Alright. Sounds like it's not for you then. That's okay.
|
| I don't know what you want us to say here. If you don't like it
| then you don't like it. No skin off of anybody's teeth if
| egypturnash isn't convinced.
| EspressoGPT wrote:
| > Not a clone of anything, but something with which the long-time
| Mac user should feel instantly comfortable.
|
| The longer I look at the screenshot, the cheekier this
| advertising seems.
| hedora wrote:
| I wonder if they cloned Finder from MacOS 9, which was better
| than the MacOS X one in pretty much every way.
|
| The screenshot makes me think they might have.
| Lammy wrote:
| It looks like the Mac OS X 10.0-10.2 Finder with the toolbar
| collapsed. Same massive icon spacing:
| https://i.imgur.com/fLndIw6.png
|
| The closest Free Software analogue I've ever found for the
| Classic Finder is ROX-Filer, pictured here:
| https://cooltrainer.org/images/original/freebsd11-wmaker.png
| jonhohle wrote:
| That screenshot gives me the feels: WindowMaker, WipEout,
| FreeBSD. That's as beautiful today as it might have been
| 15+ years ago. The "modern" FreeBSD logo and composited
| windows decorations betray it's timelessness a bit (2005 or
| sooner), though I suppose the earliest it could have been
| was sometime after 1999 (ROX-Filer and Sim City 3000).
| jnsie wrote:
| I wonder if, in the future, stable diffusion or other AI
| techniques can be used to generate nice icon sets and other UI
| elements. Not that I'd expect Apple levels of design, but
| anything to bridge the gap would be nice...I'm primarily a macOS
| user, secondarily a windows user, and my forays into *nix have
| always provided a poor first impression. Anecdotal, of course...
| inamberclad wrote:
| I feel like this is weak argument these days, places like
| reddit.com/r/unixporn are overkill when it comes to styling a
| desktop environment, but a quick change to the Numix icon set
| and a new GTK theme makes most Linux installations with Gnome
| look great.
| BoppreH wrote:
| Or bring back skins[0]! Have software read textures from areas
| in a big image, then let the user replace the image. Forest
| theme for Microsoft Teams! SciFi file explorer!
|
| I tried using MidJourney to generate exaggerated UI themes (not
| skins, just general themes for inspiration), but the results
| were disappointing. They were always gorgeous[1], but my prompt
| engineering skills couldn't coax it to use space efficiently.
|
| [0]: https://skins.webamp.org/
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/5KC2u7J.png
| doubled112 wrote:
| Part of me really misses those days, and another part of me
| is screaming "please no" internally.
| jchw wrote:
| I'm not a KDE user, but to be honest, I quite like a lot of the
| KDE designs. I'll admit, KDE design is nowhere near as
| meticulous as Apple's design, but even since KDE 3 I've always
| admired the design anyways, just for being colorful and
| functional.
|
| Focusing too much on style can be a bit of a problem, though.
| All too often, Linux theming and UX feels very "skin deep" -
| and obviously, It'd be great if most people focused on
| stability and robustness at this point.
| nunodonato wrote:
| that's interesting. I find the icons available for *nix far
| superior and interesting. The problem is finding out the good
| stuff, because its hard with the current signal vs noise ratio.
| I actually dislike the current macOS icon sets, far too
| colorful and saturated.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Which icon sets do you find superior, in particular?
|
| Note that parent meant the UI holistically, and not just icon
| sets.
|
| AFAIK, this way of thinking about the design of the entire
| system, and not just in discrete segments is largely unique
| to macOS. I think it is because Apple has a design language
| they try to enforce as rigorously as possible, even onto 3rd
| party developers, which gives the OS & all applications on it
| a very uniform and consistent feeling.
|
| Windows is the worst. Microsoft has a design language, but
| they barely encourage it even among their own apps (Settings
| vs. Control Panel as one example).
|
| I will make a strong claim: I don't think any O.S. developer
| takes design truly seriously besides Apple. Definitely not
| Microsoft, _partially_ Google with Android, and _certainly_
| not most *nix distros (with the possible rare exception like
| System76 's Pop!_OS).
| dijit wrote:
| Most linux desktop environments (notable exception of
| Gnome3 though it applies for Gnome2) seem to favour old
| school UX design which, incidentally, I happen to find
| nicer than "pretty".
|
| I personally really like the Adwaita icon sets much more
| than windows and at least on-par with MacOS, though MacOS
| has the advantage of being rendered only on extremely high
| DPI screens. So most people only have that experienfe
| jwells89 wrote:
| For whatever it's worth, macOS/OS X has had very high
| resolution icons well before high DPI displays were
| commonly available. Even 10.0 which was released in 2001
| supported 128x128 icons, which was 4x larger than what
| other popular desktops were capable of at the time and
| enabled far greater levels of detail, even if most users
| wouldn't be seeing that detail most of the time.
| michaelbrave wrote:
| Honestly probably not that hard, could train a model/lora with
| about 30 images, so gather more than 30 good looking icons,
| train a model and then take the time to prompt and generate all
| the icons you need. Then do touchups in gimp/photoshop.
|
| At most would take me a week or so to do I think, more likely
| less than a day.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Heh my dream was a real-time generative overlay on top of Dwarf
| Fortress ASCII art.
|
| (That was before the Steam version ofc.)
| egypturnash wrote:
| "here is an open source operating system for creatives"
|
| First HN comment: "I wonder if we could use AI to replace the
| large-scale creative work of making sets icons."
| fao_ wrote:
| Visiting The Orange Site provides a wealth of comedy
| JediPig wrote:
| I love FreeBSD on personal servers and workstations. But lean
| into FreeBSD not into macOS look and feel. The m2 macs make it
| the best workstation out there. If you have that there is no
| business need for this os.
|
| Run it for fun but it's never going to reach mass appeal
| Gud wrote:
| Don't know what people expect from an operating system like
| FreeBSD. Will joe average install it on their family computer?
| Probably not.
|
| Still FreeBSD quietly powers so many things, and has been used
| for so many platforms(Hotmail, Yahoo, WhatsApp, Netflix, etc).
| plus PlayStation, userland in OS X... plus all the network
| appliances(and storage).
|
| It seems to me FreeBSD gives you a great platform to do your
| own thing without getting in your way.
| dark-star wrote:
| I tested helloSystem when it was still new and beta. It was buggy
| but it showed great potential. I will try it again tomorrow, I
| guess a lot has changed (for the better)
|
| I love the idea of FreeBSD on a desktop (or laptop), and stock
| FreeBSD has always been troublesome to get working nicely on a
| laptop (at least for me)
| skibz wrote:
| Another project in this ecosystem: https://ravynos.com/
| rahen wrote:
| RavynOS is a _much_ more interesting project. Basically it
| keeps everything that 's open-source in Darwin (save for XNU),
| and re-implements what that's proprietary with tailor made free
| software, on top of a FreeBSD kernel.
|
| Since many layers, frameworks and APIs from macOS are reused
| (even for the GUI which is written in Objective-C and uses the
| actual Cocoa APIs), the goal is to achieve compatibility with
| both macOS and FreeBSD apps. And yes, it natively runs Mach-O
| binaries in the kernel, no emulation layer.
|
| "ravynOS is explicitly trying to be compatible with Mac
| software at a source and eventually a binary level, without
| losing support for FreeBSD/X11 software, and to implement a
| very similar experience on the desktop and at the command line.
| For example, on ravynOS you can type open -a MyApp image.jpg
| and have image.jpg open in MyApp. You will find things in
| (mostly) the same directories as a Mac, like ~/Library or
| /System/Library/Fonts."
|
| Most other projects are just vanilla FreeBSD or Linux with a
| macOS theme.
| trollied wrote:
| The UI reminds me of RISC OS!
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's a pretty clear rip of macOS, from the aqua-inspired UI,
| finder at base, to the layout of the directories.
| danjoredd wrote:
| I mean, the directories are laid out in the same way because
| MacOS runs on top of BSD. They basically ARE the same file
| system. I agree on the rest of your points though.
| lproven wrote:
| Allegedly, one of the Acorn OS developers quit and went to work
| for NeXT in Silicon Valley... and right afterwards, the test
| in-development version of NeXTstep suddenly had this Acorn Risc
| OS-like floating icon bar! NeXT also implemented app
| directories, where all the contents of an app, its resources
| and libraries and so on, are in a folder with a special magic
| name... another idea nicked from Acorn.
|
| (Risc OS apps are called !Name; NeXTstep ones are called
| Name.app.)
|
| Acorn Risc OS was also the first OS to have integrated, always-
| on font antialiasing, next seen in NeXTstep, and the first to
| have full-window drag.
|
| Source: a retrospective meetup of the surviving developers,
| which I moderated.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_SDL0IwbCc&t=2s
| [deleted]
| superq wrote:
| somewhat related to the directories:
|
| https://www.macdisk.com/macforken.php
| spookie wrote:
| Oh, interesting!
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| Post from 7 months ago with 210 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34519824
| bee_rider wrote:
| The complaints in the first post there really stood out when I
| looked at the screenshots on the HelloSystem site. I'm not
| saying what the complaints are, because I'm curious if they'll
| be so obvious to somebody who isn't primed to look for them.
| Could someone skip that thread and look directly at the
| HelloSystem site, then check and see if they also saw the
| issues in that post? It could be an interesting experiment.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| What's the moratorium for posting a comment here?
|
| 20 minutes from now?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't think there needs to be any. Hopefully folks won't
| check the follow up posts to mine before checking the site,
| haha. I think we're not going to get a scientific sampling
| anyway, so may as well just let people have fun with it.
| parasti wrote:
| That's literally the first thing I noticed in the screenshot
| on the website. Spacing in the UI is very inconsistent,
| almost the polar opposite of macOS aesthetic.
| swozey wrote:
| About 20 years ago I was an openbsd and freebsd admin, webhosting
| mostly. Then the rest of my maybe 16 year career was debian with
| some sprinkles of centos/rhel
|
| What would bring me to bsd today? Not in a negative way at all,
| I'm curious what people love about it. I barely remember much
| about it. I loved pf over iptables but I don't remember why. It
| has jailed containers which.. I think people still love? I'm not
| sure.
|
| I'm reading about appjails and these sound interesting.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| Same same. Today I'm indifferent to Linux flavors. I am not
| sure why I would use FreeBSD although I recall the community
| being very helpful.
| _jal wrote:
| I run FreeBSD for my home storage server, have for almost a
| decade now. I've also used it for various other things here and
| there, but that's my major personal use.
|
| The best thing about it is that it is boring, completely
| predictable outside of hardware faults, and dependable. If you
| know how to competently manage it, which isn't hard, it is a
| rock.
|
| Also nice is that FreeBSD isn't involved in vendor tugs-of-war
| that result in the constant stream of bullshit changes* - the
| network config format doesn't change every version, people
| aren't playing political games with init, etc. All of which
| mean far fewer goofy make-work surprises.
|
| And the quality of their releases is still very high. I
| consider them one of top open source projects, period, in terms
| of qualities others should emulate for better results.
|
| As with anything, it isn't for everything. If you need the
| latest version of whatever is trendy this month, you should run
| Linux. But if your use case benefits from stability and ease of
| administration, FreeBSD rocks.
|
| * What is bullshit in my environment may not be in yours, etc.
| enriquto wrote:
| For me the main point of bsd or small linuxes over
| debians/redhats is that running htop fills just one third of
| the screen and I can understand what each program does right
| away. It fills me with a sense of control and tranquility that
| just isn't there in more complex setups.
| swozey wrote:
| That's a great point. Would you consider yourself a
| minimalist in general? I think I'm the opposite. I'm one of
| those people who installs every (secure and vetted)
| plugin/extension/app that makes my life/work "easier." I have
| a ridiculous amount of vscode/intellij/obsidian plugins that
| I use. I'm sure if I used emacs/vim it'd be the same.
|
| Just as an example that's super frowned upon, I install about
| 5-10 various packages like jq, htop, net-utils, bash, httpie,
| things like that into each oci container I build. I also have
| the exact same customized ~/.bashrc with aliases and a motd
| that tells me the distro and outdated packages and what not
| in all of the oci containers I build. Also a custom ~/.nanorc
| with syntax highlighting so I don't have to constantly write
| nano -l (everyone will hate me for using nano, I know).
|
| I have to troubleshoot containers a lot. This example I'm
| posting here went from a 150Mb container to 203 with my
| "debug" packages. And each time I exec into one I get a nice
| little motd that makes fixing things so much faster for me. A
| 203Mb container has absolutely no effect on my autoscaling
| infrastructure. We watch for anomalies and immediately scale
| up and have the oci images cached on the clusters. I used to
| make these little 30mb scratch go containers that had
| literally nothing but the app. It was so annoying having to
| troubleshoot them and the benefit seemed so not worth it. Not
| having bash installed is absolutely horrendous. Being forced
| to use sh. I can't use arrow keys to move the cursor or up
| and down to go through history. I think ctrl-r doesnt even
| work.
|
| I would get absolutely screamed at by the greybeard genius
| nix admins I used to work with. But I make the infra
| standards now.. Package attack vectors are definitely a
| concern. My containers go through a rigorous security test
| while being built.
|
| https://imgur.com/MkyuyVS
| wk_end wrote:
| I'm not a lawyer but if this gets any traction Apple's gonna get
| big mad about the branding, aren't they? They're basically
| swiping original Mac advertising campaign wholesale.
| soneil wrote:
| "hello" doesn't show up in
| https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...
| which probably makes it much easier.
| wk_end wrote:
| > The following is a non-exhaustive list of Apple's
| trademarks and service marks. [...] The absence of a product
| or service name or logo from this list does not constitute a
| waiver of Apple's trademark or other intellectual property
| rights concerning that name or logo.
| bee_rider wrote:
| So the idea is that Apple might have a trademark on the
| word Hello in cursive?
| wk_end wrote:
| Like I said, I'm not a lawyer, but: yes, I would claim
| that Apple has a trademark on the word "hello", entirely
| in lowercase cursive, in that very particular cursive
| typeface, with a animation that shows it being written
| out at precisely that speed and in precisely that manner,
| as a means of promoting a distinctive graphical computer
| operating system, in a manner that they've continued to
| reference for the past 40 years [0], yes.
|
| Not a lawyer though.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGrxGQUPqxk
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses
| wk_end wrote:
| Do you think Apple BSD licensed the iconic Macintosh "hello"
| image or something?
|
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/01/24/apple-launched-
| ma...
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| No I meant this is under BSD, and they aren't even selling
| it.
| wk_end wrote:
| Releasing something for free, whether as in beer or as in
| freedom, doesn't give you carte blanche to violate
| trademark law. For just one example (well...hundreds),
| look at the multitude of fangames Nintendo has shut down
| [0].
|
| [0] https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/01/nintendo_is
| sues_ma...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| As much as I disagree with OP, copyright law is not trademark
| law.
| wk_end wrote:
| It's true that trademark is what's at play here, although
| either way - giving something a BSD license doesn't mean
| you can use it to violate others' copyright OR trademarks.
| jeroen79 wrote:
| i don't know why people wan't to keep cloning osx, it might looks
| nice, but time has proven its a quite unproductive gui
| replete wrote:
| https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
| jwells89 wrote:
| The problem is that very few macOS clone projects reach
| anything close to maturity, which means that paradigm is barely
| represented in FOSS desktops. Aside from GNOME (which is
| iPadOS, not macOS) and its prettier cousin Pantheon, It's just
| Win9X clones and tiling WMs as far as the eye can see.
|
| That might not seem like a big deal, but if the goal is to get
| as many people switched away from commercial operating systems
| as possible there needs to be a healthy range of
| conventions/workflows represented by meaningfully different DEs
| so more users find one they can slip on like a comfy pair of
| shoes. For most people, switching desktop paradigms is
| something they want to avoid if at all possible because of the
| immense friction it brings.
| lproven wrote:
| Ubuntu Unity did better than most in that department.
|
| Still alive and being maintained, too.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Unity's implementation of a global menu is probably the
| most consistently functional I've seen at the very least.
| KDE has this feature but compatibility is more spotty,
| partially thanks to necessary packages going unmaintained
| and on my main distro (Fedora) missing altogether.
| mvanbaak wrote:
| Please provide more context. "Proven to be X" without proof nor
| links ...
| gaze wrote:
| Yeah but always OS X of maybe 10 years ago. They gave up the
| glossy thing.
|
| Also I disagree about it being unproductive. Not everyone is
| most productive in i3 or whatever.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Contribute to GNUStep if you want to support a legitimate
| transition for Mac users.
|
| Not yet another aqua rip off distro running reskinned Mate.
|
| Just get FreeBSD with gnome or mate if you're so inclined.
|
| If you're using Hello as your daily driver, you're gonna get your
| hands dirty getting things to work anyway. Might as well start
| from core.
|
| GhostBSD, MidnightBSD, TrueOS, haven't people realized FreeBSD is
| too obscure to get a community led distro to gain traction?
|
| Ubuntu is the use case for "mere mortals" on Unix-like systems.
| Anyone tech savvy enough to use FreeBSD on a personally machine
| successfully (whoever you are) doesn't need some pre rolled
| version.
|
| It's a niche use case and this project will ultimately go
| nowhere.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Presumably, what technically-minded Mac users who might switch
| want and what projects like this are aiming to achieve is to
| have a high level of consistency and "one piece design" not
| just on the user-facing half, but also under the hood, and the
| various BSDs have more to offer in this department than
| mainstream GNU/Linux distributions.
|
| It might be worth looking at one of those Linux distros that
| swaps out GNU userland/toolchain in favor of BSD equivalents
| wherever possible though.
| pacija wrote:
| I also find these BlahBlahBSDs silly. Since when is setting
| desktop themes or tuning a few sysctls "forking" or worth
| calling a new OS?
| pacija wrote:
| Ok, I see downvotes coming and I understand I didn't give
| enough context so I'll try to clarify.
|
| I use BSD, particularly FreeBSD and OpenBSD, for two decades
| now. For the last 15 years professionally.
|
| Four "recognized" members of BSD family are FreeBSD, OpenBSD,
| NetBSD and DragonflyBSD. Each of them pursue different goals
| - FreeBSD stability, OpenBSD security, NetBSD portability,
| DragonflyBSD no idea, never tried it. All of them have
| similar (make) but different way of building (poudriere /
| dpb) and managing (pkg / pkg_ _) packages, similar (rc) but
| different way of managing system services (rc.d /_ /
| rc.conf.local), similar (ifconfig) but different (rc.conf's
| ifconfig_if / hostname.if) way of setting network interfaces,
| similar but different ways of containerization and
| virtualization (jails, chroot, vmm, bhyve) etc.
|
| I have reasons why I would choose FreeBSD over OpenBSD for
| storage server (ZFS), or vice versa for router / firewall
| (rdomains, pf, bgpd, ospfd, iked / ipsec etc.)
|
| I don't have a slightest idea why would I choose HelloSystem
| or HardenedBSD for my laptop instead of FreeBSD.
| rollcat wrote:
| > I don't have a slightest idea why would I choose
| HelloSystem or HardenedBSD for my laptop instead of
| FreeBSD.
|
| I haven't actually tried HelloSystem on real hardware as a
| daily driver, but I can clearly see why people would find
| it valuable (at least according to their stated goals).
|
| The reasons are the same as why you'd choose Ubuntu over
| Slackware: the base install is intended as a fully
| functional desktop OS. Focus on the OOB experience,
| vertical integration, accessibility, polish, simplicity,
| etc. Even if you're a power user, there is still value to
| having all of these things: your energy is probably better
| spent on something more useful than figuring why basic,
| random stuff isn't working. (Assuming HelloSystem delivers
| on their stated goals!)
|
| It is true that these are all "merely" downstream projects,
| but I wouldn't dismiss them on these grounds alone. As long
| as any improvements can be ported back to FreeBSD, it's a
| win for everyone involved.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I personally wouldn't dare run any BSD on a daily laptop.
| I've been down that road with a ThinkPad T410 and all 3 of
| the major ones. OpenBSD wouldn't support my network card,
| FreeBSD was easiest but I remember X11 would lag, resorting
| in having to turn off some hardware accel stuff (thanks to
| their helpful forum), NetBSD experience was brief but I
| simply felt like I was in no mans land, maybe i was
| wrong...
|
| Mouse gestures wouldn't work, I think some media buttons,
| all these annoying little things I had to hunt down and
| tweak myself. Mind you again, this was on a damn Thinkpad,
| what better laptop to run FreeBSD!
|
| That's probably the use case for what HelloSystem is for, a
| BSD you don't have to muck around with on a laptop. But I
| knew damn well when I was 20 I wasn't going to swallow my
| pride and install some kiddieBSD, at that rate I'd say why
| BSD at all and go back to Ubuntu where everything is safe.
| I did and have no regrets lol.
|
| I don't remember where, but someone once said FreeBSD is
| best for computers that you don't have to look at. That and
| of course as a starting point for companies like Nintendo,
| Sony, and Apple to derive from with their ACTUAL
| development teams.
| jwells89 wrote:
| > Each of them pursue different goals - FreeBSD stability,
| OpenBSD security, NetBSD portability, DragonflyBSD no idea,
| never tried it.
|
| The goal of desktop BSDs are to specialize as desktop OSes,
| and people keep trying it because the four main BSDs aren't
| particularly great at it -- OpenBSD is probably being the
| best (mainly thanks to OpenBSD devs dogfooding it on their
| laptops), but its hardware compatibility and older packages
| aren't particularly great for most desktop users nor is its
| functional but spartan setup process.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Its less setting a new desktop theme, and more maintaining
| compatibility with a Desktop Environment. Ghost BSD is
| significant because it is the "easy way" to get BSD working
| on computers. FreeBSD by itself is about like setting up Arch
| Linux. Same with most versions of BSD. If you know what you
| are doing you can get something set up, but if you don't care
| for needing to set everything up yourself, a distro like
| GhostBSD is invaluable.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > On GNU-style systems (e.g., most Linux distributions),
| status=progress does not work and can be left away.
|
| This isn't really an accurate claim. How strange.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Yep. GNU dd definitely supports status=progress, at least in
| any modern version.
|
| Maybe they're thinking of busybox dd?
| Santosh83 wrote:
| Seems to be KDE on top of FreeBSD?
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| for what it's worth KDE3.5.x is available as Trinity Desktop
| for FreeBSD.
| spookie wrote:
| It's also available in some Linux distros, but it's a bit of
| a mess getting it running.
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