Every try FreeBSD?

has anyone tried FreeBSD as a desktop? How was the experience? Is it hard to learn?

Tried FreeBSD or what ever the "most" user friendly BSD is called. Was pretty hardcore, left it very soon...

I have tried the live cd, and thought it was ok, albeit very different from anything I had tried. Later an attempt was made to install it. I will never try that again! the installer had way to many option imo, and was overall cryptic. but maybe it was just me.

PC-BSD is FreeBSD with a friendly installer. I can't remember if there is also a live CD.

Partitioning was very confusing. Also, couldn't get my homepna-cards working, so no net ](*,)

www.pcbsd.org

This is THE best BSD especially for desktops. It has a very simple package system and is highly polished.

There is even a vmware image you can download and run under vmware player.

*moving to BSD forum*

It has a very simple package system

Yeah. It's statically compiled binaries. simple? I guess so. efficient? maybe not. I'll jump on the desktopBSD http://desktopbsd.net/ bandwagon (not so much a bandwagon, but a cart maybe :) ) as soon as they release 1.6 though...

I actively use FreeBSD as a desktop at home. Questioning wether an OS is hard to learn or not is purely objective. People say Ubuntu is hard to learn mostly because of the text file configuration you have to do for sources list and to get certain things working. You have to have a certain mindset to run any type of unix in general. With FreeBSD I hardly see it as "hardcore", as mentioned by someone in an earlier post. As long as you read the handbook and read the manuals like your supposed to then nothing is hard. Also learning how to ask questions correctly is important ;). If you go into an operating system with the mindset that something is hard, such as the common "Oh NetBSD has so much text file configuration and compiling things from source will surely break things" will ultimately result in a bad experience. My advice is, try it, and decide for yourself.

kvonb said: www.pcbsd.org

This is THE best BSD especially for desktops. It has a very simple package system and is highly polished.

There is even a vmware image you can download and run under vmware player. curious, what theme is that you're using? (in ubuntu i mean, not vmware)

Well FreeBSD is really great operation system. But I think OpenBSD would be the best. To talk about good and bad things there is no point. Everything is written in http://www.freebsd.com/ or http://www.openbsd.com/

I used FreeBSD 6.1 for around six months just prior to switching to Kubuntu. It was a lot of work to get things going at first, since I hadn't used *nix in years, but I enjoyed it after a while. However, I never got the wireless working, and it didn't seem quite suited to my laptop. Thumbs up all the same, though.

md5 said: Well FreeBSD is really great operation system. But I think OpenBSD would be the best. To talk about good and bad things there is no point. Everything is written in http://www.freebsd.com/ or http://www.openbsd.com/

There are pros & cons to both. I like the OpenBSD approach but it also has it's downsides.

FreeBSD was my first exposure to a *nix system I dual booted it on a 2nd hard drive and had a blast playing with everything. The main reason I didn't switch to FreeBSD from windows back then it was several years before the nvidia drivers became available. It was quite stable and ran faster than most other distros I tried at the time especially comparing DE running speeds. If I ever have need of a dedicated server some point in the future I will most likely give it a run again.

I have run it but only as giving it a try in a virtual machine. It is not for me.

mips said: There are pros & cons to both. I like the OpenBSD approach but it also has it's downsides.

which is better for a newb ?

I tried to install FreeBSD on my laptop, but was unsuccessful.

dbbolton said: which is better for a newb ?

From that perspective they are pretty much the same for a 'newb'. I would say go with FreeBSD.

If you want an easy intoduction to FreeBSD try PCBSD or DesktopBSD. Would be comparable to installing sabayon linux in order to try Gentoo out. Makes it easier for you and you can get familiar with it.

If you do try FreeBSD I suggest having the FreeBSD install documentation on hand if you dont have access to a second pc with internet access.

I've messed with FreeBSD on VMWare, but I just didn't have the time to get Gnome/KDE/etc. installed.

However, I've used PCBSD extensivly on VMWare and in dual-boot with Ubuntu, and even submitted a PBI to the queue.

If you do try FreeBSD I suggest having the FreeBSD install documentation on hand if you dont have access to a second pc with internet access.

scary ;) but i love a good challenge.

dbbolton said: scary ;) but i love a good challenge.

Not scary but different. For example, the partitioner is different (harder?) to linux so if you have not done it before it might just result in a lot of head scratching like it did for me ;)

i run FreeBSD as my home kind of do everything server...for that function i couldn't be happier with it...as a desktop OS, i think it sucks

downloading the iso's right now :)