DistroWatch Weekly |
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 883, 14 September 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 37th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Package managers, software ports, and distributions are all really various approaches for getting software tools into the hands of users. There are many different approaches to software distribution, whether it focuses on fixed operating system images, portable packages, minimal traditional packages, or source code. This week we explore a number of approaches to packaging and sharing software. We begin with a quick overview of GhostBSD, a desktop-oriented project based on FreeBSD which tries to make setting up the system as simple as possible. Then we talk about Finnix, a Debian-based Linux distribution which provides a minimal set of tools on live media. Another common approach to distributing software is using containers and Docker is one of the more popular tools for working with containers. We share an overview of Docker and what it is used for below in our Questions and Answers column. Do you use Docker? Let us know where in this week's Opinion Poll. In our News section we discuss improvements to Gentoo's Portage package management utility. Plus we talk about Fedora making Wayland the default display protocol for KDE Plasma and report on DragonFly BSD developers making it possible to grow a HAMMER2 storage volume. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: GhostBSD 20.08.04, Finnix 121
- News: Gentoo updates Portage, Fedora to enable Wayland for KDE, HAMMER2 can now grow to fit a partition
- Questions and answers: An overview of Docker
- Released last week: Zorin OS 15.3, NuTyX 11.6, deepin 20
- Torrent corner: ArcoLinux, Bluestar, deepin, Manjaro, MidnightBSD, KDE neon, NuTyX, Zorin OS
- Upcoming releases: Fedora 33 Beta
- Opinion poll: Running Docker containers
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (13MB) and MP3 (10MB) formats.
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Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
GhostBSD 20.08.04
About a month ago the GhostBSD team published a new release. The GhostBSD operating system is based on FreeBSD and focuses on desktop use. It has a graphical installer, some convenient desktop utilities for handling tasks such as installing updates, and ships with the MATE desktop. There is also a community edition of GhostBSD which runs the Xfce desktop instead of MATE. Both editions run on 64-bit (x86_64) machines exclusively.
Apart from updating MATE to version 1.24.0, the new snapshot of GhostBSD introduces one big change: automated boot environment snapshots during package upgrades. This allows the administrator to have snapshots of the operating system's filesystem taken prior to each package upgrade, ensuring that if something breaks, we can reboot and rollback the system to its previous state. This should make GhostBSD secure against broken updates in a similar fashion to openSUSE when the latter is installed on Btrfs.
Live media
I downloaded the MATE edition which is 2.6GB in size. Booting from the live media brings up the MATE desktop. At the top of the screen is a panel containing the Applications, Places, and System menus. The right side of the panel houses the system tray. There is a second panel along the bottom of the screen that features a task switcher. On the desktop we find icons for the file manager and system installer.
Hardware
I tried running GhostBSD in VirtualBox and on my laptop. The system performed fairly well in VirtualBox, responding quickly and running fairly smoothly. The desktop defaulted to a low resolution, 800x600 pixels, but this could be adjusted upwards in the Display module under the System menu.
When I switched over to my laptop, I found GhostBSD worked well with the hardware. My screen resolution was automatically detected, sound worked out of the box, and wireless networking functioned smoothly. The system used about 720MB of Active memory and 190MB of Wired memory when signed into the live desktop.
GhostBSD 20.08.04 -- Running the MATE desktop
(full image size: 133kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
Installing
GhostBSD uses a custom, graphical system installer. The installer begins by asking us to select our preferred language from a list. Then we are asked to choose our keyboard layout and time zone from additional lists. When it comes to disk partitioning we have three basic options: take over the disk with ZFS, guided partitioning with UFS, or manual partitioning.
I ended up going through the installer four times and got to try each of the partitioning options. Taking the manual approach caused the installer to show me the layout of my disk and a partition manager similar to the one used in the Ubiquity and Calamares installers. Then the installer locked up. When I tried the guided UFS option the installer locked up and aborted. I went through the guided ZFS twice. This approach takes over one entire disk and gives us the chance to select GPT or MBR disk layouts, swap space size, and the name of the ZFS storage pool.
When selecting the guided ZFS option, the installer would continue, giving me the chance to pick boot loader settings and make up an administrative password. The last step is to create username and password for a regular user account. This screen gives us the chance to pick our command line shell with the default being fish. We can change this to another shell such as bash, tcsh, ksh, or zsh. The installer then copies its files to the hard drive and exits, returning us to the desktop.
As I mentioned before, I ran the through installer four times. It failed to finish when using either guided UFS or manual partitioning. I made two attempts at using ZFS, once with a GPT disk layout and once with MBR. In both cases, whether I was running my computer in UEFI or Legacy BIOS mode, the system failed to start after the installer had finished its work. The boot process would begin, then quickly report it could not find the boot loader on my fresh copy of GhostBSD. It seems as though the system is trying to find the boot loader in multiple locations and missing it each time. There is a screen in the installer that asks about boot loader settings and I made sure to confirm the FreeBSD boot loader was selected, so I'm puzzled as to why the software could not be found.
I was disappointed in my experience with GhostBSD this time around. I try out the operating system about once every year or two and, in the past, I've typically had positive experiences with it. The project evolves quickly and showcases a lot of good aspects of the underlying FreeBSD platform. I've often recommended GhostBSD to people who want to try a flavour of desktop BSD. However, this time I could not get GhostBSD up and running. I decided to move on to trying another project this week.
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Finnix 121
The next project I decided to look at is Finnix. Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian. It can be used to mount and manipulate hard drives and partitions, monitor networks, and rebuild boot records. The most recent version of Finnix is based on Debian's Testing branch.
Version 121 introduces a few changes, such as not shipping with the sl command which shows an animation of a train slowly moving across the screen when people mistype the ls command. The LILO boot loader has been removed. The non-zero exit codes of commands are now shown in the command prompt.
The release announcement says "Fixed SSH remote access" though without details as to what this means. That is, I can't tell if there was remote access and it was disabled, or now remote access is allowed, or if the tools to remotely access another computer were fixed. This release also introduces zRAM which uses 50% of the computer's physical memory. Basically, this feature allows Finnix to set aside half of RAM to act as compressed swap space. In theory this allows us to hold more items in RAM while compressing the lesser used pieces of data. Finnix 121 is available as a 509MB download for 64-bit (x86_64) computers exclusively.
In VirtualBox the Finnix distribution booted to a text console and automatically logged me in as the root user. As advertised, any error exit codes are displayed in the console's prompt, making it easier to troubleshoot commands that are misbehaving. The distribution is fairly light, using about 75MB of RAM. Well, 75MB of plain RAM is actively used while 50% of RAM is set aside for the zRAM compressed swap space.
Unfortunately, I found Finnix was unable to boot on my laptop. The distribution failed to show any signs of life at all when booted in Legacy BIOS mode. When I switched to UEFI the Finnix boot menu would appear, but the distribution would run into trouble early in the start-up process. A brief error would appear saying there was a problem concerning the "magic number" and then the system would restart.
Assuming we are able to run Finnix, either in a virtual machine or on physical hardware, the distribution ships with the usual collection of GNU command line tools. Manual pages are installed for us. The distribution runs the systemd init software and is powered by version 5.7 of the Linux kernel.
The interface is entirely command line driven. I tried to find out what specific, special tools might be included to help us troubleshoot problems and rescue crippled systems. There isn't much detail to be found in the project's documentation. It seems as though Finnix mostly provides common command line utilities and assumes the administrator can work out what to use and how to use the tools.
Should we need additional software, we can use the APT command line package management tools to install new programs from Debian's Testing branch. I tried installing a few utilities and they all downloaded and ran as expected.
Earlier I mentioned being intrigued by the "Fixed SSH remote access" bullet point in the release notes. I found no secure shell service running on Finnix. There are no network services running on commonly used ports. The OpenSSH client software is installed allowing us to connect to remote servers.
Finnix is a curious distribution in that it seems to mostly do what it sets out to do - be a minimal, rescue CD distribution - while not really presenting the user with any special tools, characteristics or documentation to help with those tasks. It pretty much just provides a text console, the basic command line tools, and minimal documentation that most distributions offer.
The main draw of Finnix appears to be its small size, it's just 509MB and therefore can fit on a CD, which might help explain its minimal nature. However, other rescue tools, such as GParted Live are smaller, ship more specialized tools, and offer graphical user interfaces. These shortcomings, along with the trouble I had booting Finnix on a platform I have successfully run other rescue tools, makes me hesitant to recommend this distribution.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a de-branded HP laptop with the following
specifications:
- Processor: Intel i3 2.5GHz CPU
- Display: Intel integrated video
- Storage: Western Digital 700GB hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Wired network device: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast
- Wireless network device: Realtek RTL8188EE Wireless network card
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Visitor supplied rating
Finnix has a visitor supplied average rating of: 9.5/10 from 2 review(s).
Have you used Finnix? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Gentoo updates Portage, Fedora to enable Wayland for KDE, HAMMER2 can now grow to fit a partition
The Gentoo project has announced a new, stable version of the Portage package management software. "We have good news! Gentoo's Portage project has recently stabilized version 3.0 of the package manager. What's new? Well, this third version of Portage removes support for Python 2.7, which has been an ongoing effort across the main Gentoo repository by Gentoo's Python project during the 2020 year. In addition, due to a user provided patch, updating to the latest version of Portage can vastly speed up dependency calculations by around 50-60%. We love to see our community engaging in our software!"
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The Fedora project is shifting focus to the Wayland display protocol from X.Org in the upcoming release of the Fedora KDE spin. Starting in Fedora 34, the KDE Plasma desktop will default to using Wayland. "With KDE Plasma 5.20, the KDE Plasma desktop environment has reached a point where nearly all commonly used features in the desktop and all major applications function in the Plasma Wayland environment on all major GPUs (including NVIDIA with the proprietary driver). Starting with Plasma 5.20 in Fedora 34, we will change the default configuration for Wayland and X11 Plasma sessions so that Wayland is preferred and used by default, while permitting the X11 session to be selected as the alternative desktop environment option." Details on this change can be found in the Fedora wiki.
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The advanced HAMMER2 filesystem offers a lot of useful features such as snapshots and multi-volume support. The filesystem now has another helpful feature that is especially useful when running the operating system on virtual machines where storage requirements may increase over time: the ability to grow a HAMMER2 volume to match its host device: "HAMMER2 now has a 'growfs' directive, so if there's room in the partition, you can expand your HAMMER2 volume to fit." Details on the 'growfs' feature can be found in this mailing list post.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
An overview of Docker
Thinking-inside-the-box asks: I'm finding lots of projects are using Docker, which is completely new to me. Can you give me a quick overview of Docker, some of its pros and cons, and a basic how-to?
DistroWatch answers: Docker is a brand of container technology. A container is an isolated collection of applications and their dependencies. The idea is that we can make a container that includes a program or service, along with everything it needs to run. Then we can copy that container, sending it to other people (or other computers) and it will work exactly the same way on those computers as it did on ours because the software inside the container is isolated from the rest of the operating system.
Containers are especially useful in situations where a software developer wants to make sure their product runs the same way on their computer as the production environment. They put their software, its dependencies, and their configuration into the container. Then they can copy it to a server, or a thousand servers, and the software should work exactly the same on each server as it did on their own machine because it has the exact same, isolated environment.
You can read more about what Docker is on their "What is a Container?" page. A container is similar to a virtual machine in that it contains isolated software that runs somewhat independently from the rest of the operating system. However, a container is lighter (and less flexible) in that it shares the same kernel as the host system. A virtual machine runs a whole, entirely separate operating system while a container typically includes just a collection of userland applications or services. This can mean less overhead, but somewhat ties the container to its host in a way virtual machines do not.
You may be thinking that a Docker container sounds a lot like portable package software such as AppImage, Snap, and Flatpak. The concept and benefits from the end-user's point of view are similar. In each case these packages (and Docker) provide all of their dependencies in a self-contained bubble and are kept separate from the host distribution's libraries and configuration. Snap, Flatpak, and Docker all use a common framework to run their portable, isolated bundles of software.
The big difference is mostly from the developer's point of view. With portable packages the developer places their application in a bundle and ship the package as a fixed product. The bundle is intended to remain static until the next version is deployed. With Docker there is the idea that the developer can create layers of software. We might start with a low-level, minimal operating system in the container. Then we can build services and custom configurations in additional layers within the container. For instance, we can start with a minimal Ubuntu install. Then add a layer for the Apache web service. Then add a PHP layer to add more web features.
The idea here is that each layer can be shared and distributed with other developers and customers. People can then build upon the layers and use those layers as a base to create their own containers. You can learn how to get started with Docker by following their Quickstart guide.
As for pros and cons, I suppose that depends on what you are trying to accomplish. From an end-user's point of view there is probably never a situation where you'd want to use Docker over a portable package format such as Flatpak, AppImage, or Snap. Those formats are all intended to be run by the end-user while Docker is more geared to developers and system administrators.
Developers tend to enjoy Docker's "building blocks" approach, being able to add layers of functionality to their containers, and customize a Docker container to suit their needs. Docker can be quite flexible in allowing developers to modify or update a container and then published it. System administrators can appreciate pushing out a new container to multiple hosts, knowing it will work exactly the same way on each server. Then, if something goes wrong, they can roll back to the previous snapshot of the container.
Should you want to learn more about Docker and how it can be used, I suggest reading the guides and resources section of the Docker documentation.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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Released Last Week |
Zorin OS 15.3
Zorin OS is an Ubuntu-based distribution which features themes which are designed to imitate other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows. The project's latest release is Zorin OS 15.3 which provides updated hardware compatibility, refreshed software for connecting with Android devices, and an updated version of LibreOffice. "Many of the built-in system technologies have seen improvements for better security, compatibility, and performance. Zorin OS 15.3 is now powered by the Linux kernel version 5.4 - the same version as in Ubuntu 20.04. In addition to performance, stability, and security improvements, it brings support for more hardware such as Intel's newly-announced 11th generation Core processors, upcoming AMD processors & GPUs, and other peripherals. This means that Zorin OS will 'just work' with even more computers and devices." Further details can be found in the distribution's release announcement.
Zorin OS 15.3 -- Exploring the live desktop and application menu
(full image size: 530kB, resolution: 1366x768 pixels)
NuTyX 11.6
NuTyX is a French Linux distribution (with multi-language support) built from Linux From Scratch and Beyond Linux From Scratch, with a custom package manager called "cards". The project's latest release is NuTyX 11.6 which features version 2.4.122 of the cards package manager, along with version 5.8.7 and 4.19.143 of the Linux kernel. The release announcement states: "I'm very pleased to announce the new NuTyX 11.6 release. The 64-bit version contains more than 1,000 packages upgraded. The 32-bit version of NuTyX, still actively supported. In the newest release, base NuTyX comes with the Long-Term Support (LTS) kernel 4.19.143 and the latest stable 5.8.7. Changelogs for the kernels are available here: kernel 4.19.143 changelog, kernel 5.8.7 changelog. The GNU C library, glibc, is now glibc 2.31. The graphical server is xorg-server 1.20.9. The mesa lib is 20.1.7, GTK3 is 3.24.22, and qt has been updated to 5.15.0. Python interpreters 3.8.3 and 2.7.18 have been included in this release. The MATE Desktop Environment comes in 1.24.1, the latest version. The Xfce Desktop Environment comes in 4.14.1, the latest version. The KDE Plasma Desktop is now 5.19.5, the Framework is now 5.73.0 and applications are now 20.08.1. Available browsers are: Firefox 80.0.1, Falkon 3.1.0, Epiphany 3.36.4, etc. Many desktop applications have been updated as well like Thunderbird 78.2.1, Scribus 1.5.5, LibreOffice 7.0.1.2, GIMP 2.10.20, etc."
deepin 20
The deepin team has published a new version of their Debian-based desktop distribution. The new release, deepin 20, features an updated Deepin Desktop Environment, upgrades the base packages to Debian 10.6, and provides newer kernels for better hardware support. "deepin 20 (1002) comes with a unified design style and redesigns the desktop environment and applications, bringing a brand new visual look. Besides that, the underlying repository is upgraded to Debian 10.5, and the system installation supports dual kernels - Kernel 5.4 and Kernel 5.7, which greatly improve system stability and compatibility. What is more, it provides a new launcher, the latest preinstalled applications, enhanced fingerprint support and system security, all of which ensures better user experiences. The new design introduces ingenious colorful icons, fresh graphics interface, natural and smooth animation effects, unique rounded-corner windows, and exquisite multitask view. All of them build a fashion and user-friendly desktop environment." Further details can screenshots can be found in the project's release announcement (Chinese, English).
Manjaro Linux 20.1
Philip Müller has announced the release of Manjaro Linux 20.1, an updated build of the project's desktop-oriented Linux distribution featuring Xfce, KDE Plasma and GNOME desktops: "We are happy to publish another stable release of Manjaro Linux, named 'Mikah'. The Xfce edition remains our flagship offering and has received the attention it deserves. With this release we ship Xfce 4.14 and have mostly focused on polishing the user experience with the desktop and window manager. Also we have switched to a new theme called Matcha. The new Display-Profiles feature allows you to store one or more profiles for your preferred display configuration. We also have implemented auto-application of profiles when new displays are connected. Our KDE edition provides the powerful, mature and feature-rich Plasma 5.19 desktop environment with a unique look-and-feel, which we had completely re-designed." See the complete release announcement for more details.
Manjaro Linux 20.1 -- Exploring the KDE Plasma desktop and welcome screen
(full image size: 440kB, resolution: 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,136
- Total data uploaded: 33.7TB
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Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
Summary of expected upcoming releases
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Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Running Docker containers
In our Questions and Answers section we talked about Docker, a container technology that makes it easy to build new container applications and services on top of existing foundations. Docker has become quite popular in recent years, especially when it comes to deploying and testing new versions of software. Do you use Docker, either at work or at home? Let us know what you find Docker useful for in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on using the Nix package manager in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Using Docker containers
I use Docker at work: | 134 (11%) |
I use Docker at home: | 108 (9%) |
I do not use Docker: | 1009 (81%) |
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Website News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 21 September 2020. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Docker requires very much course studies, skills & time? (by Greg Zeng on 2020-09-14 00:57:01 GMT from Australia)
Still very puzzled. Seems it is available for both Windows & Linux. Equally & easily? Appimage, snap & Flatpak can be done by some people, without any diploma. These three have trouble if you have unusual user settings, such as font, colors, HiDPI, etc. Docker seems more comnplex than VirtualBox, etc. If it is "so easy", why is it not used so much, in some Linux systems, or in comparative benchmarks?
2 • Docker non use there of.. (by Bobbie Sellers on 2020-09-14 02:44:46 GMT from United States)
There are other solutions for people who want to isolate applications and processes. Qubes is one and works well from what I have seen but I prefer probably because I have been using Linux without a computer science degree for 15 years or so.
Before that I used my Amiga OS 3.9 for everything important and of course it is not suited to the modern web environment being designed for single user use, with web use sort of tacked on. But I stopped using my second-hand Amiga A2000b with 68060/50 MHz/64 Megabytes of ram when it stopped working. No longer handy Amiga repair shops so i tried to use emulation but it was really meant for games and I used principally text and word processing applications. XP was usable but Mandriva Linux 2006 really was the good replacement and so I switched on over.
None of the these had containerized processing which I find awkward and rather slow even on my present hardware which is based on Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4800MQ CPU @ 2.70GHz with 16 GB of ram,
The future may be with Docker and Qubes-like systems but it will take a lot more power and memory than I care to think about.
bliss
3 • GhostBSD (by sammy_cda on 2020-09-14 03:35:42 GMT from United States)
Interesting that you couldn’t get it running. Like you I try it every few years and the issue I have after every install is a buzzing noise, if my recollection is right, like a 60 Hz hum through the speakers. Never could figure out how to stop it and always gave up at that point.
4 • docker use (by dave on 2020-09-14 06:27:17 GMT from Australia)
We use Windows docker containers (running Windows on Windows) for running a specific service service for many clients. It's actually been surprisingly good. You can build disposable, reproducible operating system images that are easy to upgrade, use almost no space, boot instantly and can be created and destroyed on demand. It forces you to separate your config/data, your guest OS and your Host OS - each is independent of the other.
Docker containers are not a drop in replacement for vms, I think sometimes people might think of containers that way and try to use them for that purpose.
For linux, you have Docker as well as lxd, chroot and yes Flatpak and Snaps, ostree - all of which have some overlapping and some completely different use cases and functionality.
5 • Docker (by Jim on 2020-09-14 07:48:32 GMT from United States)
I run Pi-Hole in a Docker container on my Open Media Vault-based home media server. Prevented me from having to add another switch to my network or deploy additional hardware and keeps the Pi-Hole functionality isolated from the rest of the OS for the most part. Super easy to set up and configure right from the web GUI or ssh with the Open Media Vault "Extras" package.
6 • GhostBSD (by NoName313 on 2020-09-14 10:10:03 GMT from Czechia)
Very sad for GhostBSD,
which is really interesting project and hope that next review will end much better. Lading installed boot loader is the very basic of any installation and its functionality should be very well tested. What else should be working then even basic installation and loading installed OS...
How could a man believe in OS, it's stability and reliability if even loading OS is such a fail.
Is there any testing? I know, it's Open Source, no-profit teams... thanks for they are doing but honestly, could GhostBSD be my OS to work on daily? How can I even think about it in this state....
Best regards NoName313
7 • Docker (by NN on 2020-09-14 10:59:30 GMT from Germany)
I also have experienced Docker for the first time a month ago, because I wanted to install a software for a small team enabling collaborative work on several projects. The most difficult part was to install a reverse proxy in order for everyone to access the software while out of the site. I didn't know anything about Docker before, and I am far tp be a Docker specialist, but so far it is easy to install, to customize and to maintain + you can get Docker images with a lot of services as stated in the Q&A vignette, which is good if you don't want to multiplicate the services that you have to administrate on your server (if you, like me, run a simple server which is also your personal PC). All in all, very good experience.
8 • Easy Containers (by igor on 2020-09-14 11:12:46 GMT from Croatia)
@1 Maybe you should take a look at EasyOS. It is all about containers. I didn't try it myself, but judging from Barry Kauler's early work, Puppy, which is the most user friendly piece of software I ever tried, this is everything you ask for: easy to use, lightweight and taking a user by hand to show her how to do it, and what to do next. I guess the issue with containers is not the learning curve or the consumption of resources, but rather finding some use case in personal desktop computing. Isolating the potentially dangerous applications is the only one consistently mentioned, and for that task there are other good solutions, Qubes being just one.
9 • oops, a double disaster + docker (by fonz on 2020-09-14 13:13:05 GMT from Indonesia)
was hoping it wouldnt end in ghostBSD failing. on my bucket list, both ghost and nomad are really high up since they both were listed as noob friendly BSDs. i still do want to try them though, it might not be a good time to try ghost, so nomad it is.
dockers do seem nice, but seem a bit complicated as others say. it might be nice to jump into the deep waters from time to time.
@8 kudos on mentioning easyOS, i keep forgetting about them even though i use puppy a lot in the past. it does look a bit more familiar as the pkg list has more familiar tools in them instead of the usual pup stuff (nothing wrong with that).
10 • GhostBSD (by Otis on 2020-09-14 13:43:38 GMT from United States)
Same as Jesse's findings. I did get it up and running once and still don't know why that happened because I could not get it going before and had tried with multiple installation settings and the bios changes etc mentioned in the review.
Once it was up and running I was happy but an update notice appeared and I ran it through the upgrade and it would not reboot; back to the same problem as before.. so..
No GhostBSD.
11 • Desktop BSD (by voidpin on 2020-09-14 15:46:59 GMT from Sweden)
I understand that these BSD-"distros" are supposed to be user friendly but, they are all dressed-up FreeBSD. Getting a full BSD desktop experience can be achieved starting from the parent BSD. Moreover, you're then free to choose which BSD you want to run and are not limited to FreeBSD. Disclaimer: I run NetBSD.
12 • BSD not working (by Friar Tux on 2020-09-14 15:49:55 GMT from Canada)
@10 (Otis) I'm curious about that. I ran into the same issue. In fact, every single BSD distro I tried came up the same (Ghost, Free, Open, Nomad, Midnight, and Trident (when it was BSD)). Either the install failed or at first update it went with the Grim Reaper. I thought, at first it was a hardware issue, but all the machines I tried them on gave the same result. Any ideas, anyone? This may help... I checked my notes and for Trident, which actually installed, here's a snippet:- ... I got all the way past reboot. BUT, that's where things got hung up. First I got all kinds of FAILS. Three that I caught were ‘dhcpcd.nfe0 and dhcpcd.wlan0’ failed; something about a ‘dumpon’ fail; and a ‘can’t find host 0.freebsd.pool.ntp.org', and finally it displayed ‘ath0: ath_legacy_rx_tasklet: sc_inreset_cnt > 0: skipping’ over and over and over (maybe twenty or thirty times) before I hit the power button.
13 • I use Docker both at home and at work (by Sitwon on 2020-09-14 16:33:10 GMT from United States)
From a developer perspective, Docker is not very complicated. It's actually a very slick toolkit for packaging up software.
I think where people get intimidated is that the Docker ecosystem is feature rich and provides a lot of sophisticated functionality that most people don't need most of the time. And also that the basic tooling and interfaces are developer-oriented rather than user-oriented.
If you're just interested in using Docker as an end user, you can run Docker containers on a number of home appliances like Synology or QNAP NAS appliances. These allow you to install and run all kinds of services that weren't specifically packaged for that particular appliance, or run multiple copies at the same time with different configurations, without having to fight with dependencies or delve deep into the configuration of the appliance.
For any kind of server application you want to run at home, you probably want to run it as a Docker container rather than as a Snap or Flatpack. Snaps and Flatpacks are better for desktop applications.
In the work realm, Docker enables teams of developers to work on large applications as a collection of smaller, isolated components (microservices). This is where Docker can start to seem more intimidating, because unlike in the home appliance scenario where you have a single container, many companies will internally deploy applications that are composed of a dozen or more containers that are inter-connected and running across a cluster of different hosts to present a single cohesive system. But for all that seeming complexity, for the developers and sysadmins who are maintaining the system Docker is actually simplifying what used to be a nightmare to develop and maintain.
14 • GhostBSD (by Tim on 2020-09-14 16:41:50 GMT from United States)
Ouch! I have a recently freed up PC host, and I decided I wanted to try GhostBSD on it. But, after all the bootup problems reported here, I guess not.
15 • BSD boot issues (by Otis on 2020-09-14 17:32:51 GMT from United States)
@12 yeah .. I don't understand enough about the boot processes, found this upon searching for "bsd boot problems":
https://docs.freebsd.org/doc/6.1-RELEASE/usr/share/doc/handbook/boot-introduction.html
Heck I don't like leaving the BSD ecosystem over this; I have been very intrigued by GhostBSD.. looks great at their website. Jesse hit on what I'd experienced, and now you.. and this site at docs.freebsd. So.. there's an issue, and an old one as that spiel there is not new.
16 • @11 "Dressed up" FreeBSD (by Robert on 2020-09-14 18:16:21 GMT from United States)
While you're not wrong, that's just like saying Ubuntu is dressed up Debian, or Manjaro is just dressed up Arch.
These distros exist for users that don't want to boot to a text interface and configure everything from scratch. And that's plenty worthwhile.
Obligatory BTW I use Arch.
17 • My use of Docker (by CS on 2020-09-14 20:14:00 GMT from United States)
Personally I've been using Docker for several years now to run databases. Nothing production grade just databases I use for various things. The advantage is it doesn't pollute your OS, you don't have to worry about dependencies so you can stick on old versions as/if needed. Works the same on Linux, Mac or Windows.
e.g. docker pull postgres:9.6 docker run --name mydb -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password -d postgres:9.6
And now you've got a fully functional database on port 5432. Need to back that database up?
docker exec -u postgres mydb pg_dump myschema | gzip -9 > myschema.db.gz
Can't top that simplicity.
18 • Common Issue With My Multiple BSD Installations (by David on 2020-09-14 22:07:25 GMT from United States)
The good news is that I have been able to successfully install and boot FuryBSD, GhostBSD and MidnightBSD on two bare metal test PC's, though it was a time-consuming struggle to get it done in each case.
The bad news is I encountered the same negative issue with each and every installation, that being fuzzy, blurry and virtually unreadable fonts / text.
Admittedly, this may be a hardware issue, as my Lenovo test machines run older Intel CPU's, but having hopped through dozens of flavors of Linux distros, I've never experienced this problem to the consistent degree that I did with my BSD experimentation.
Unreadable text would certainly be a deal breaker for a large majority of potential users, as it most assuredly is for me.
So, just like @16, I'll be sticking with Arch.
JMHO
19 • Docker/Flatkpak/Snap seem beneficial for developers, not as much for users. (by Martin on 2020-09-14 23:47:36 GMT from United States)
Maybe I'm old-fashioned. I like everything to be packaged and maintained under my distribution's package management system. In other words, I like my distribution--and its tools--to be responsible for *distribution* and updating of the software.
As a user, I just don't see the benefit for most cases. There are only 2 possible advantages I can see from a user perspective. I don't find either of them very convincing, and only one of them *somewhat* convincing.
1. For pre-configured "turn-key" server set ups that tend to be complicated and fraught with rabbit holes, it does seem like a container-package can benefit an end-user. It might make it easier, especially for a less experienced user who could find it harder to sift through the filesystem looking for config files that father-time (or old-man Debian) have relocated from their traditional place. This seems like a somewhat convincing benefit for the end-user.
Even still, my personal preference is to keep things simple and run them the regular way, even if takes a little extra effort. I installed Nextcloud through the Snap store recently, but I got so annoyed by all the extra things I had to learn about snaps. I ended up getting rid of it and starting over the traditional way for the final set-up.
2. Isolating un-trusted software: In my view, this is an unconvincing justification for using a distributed container. If you don't trust the developer enough to run their software directly on your system, then running it in a container they've configured doesn't seem like a meaningful improvement.
From what I've read containers aren't primarily intended as a way to isolate processes. While it can be a side-benefit, it's also not a guarantee. There are often still ways for a host to be affected by a running container. And that's especially true if you don't take time to configure the container yourself.
Recently, I learned about Firejail, is a tool specifically designed to isolate software from the system and only give processes access to the components YOU want them to have access to. I find this much better suited to the purpose of isolating software, especially those not-very trustworthy proprietary apps that some of us are forced to us, like Zoom. Firejail is a much more direct solution for isolating code.
20 • Alternatives to Docker? (by Scott Dowdle on 2020-09-15 00:35:52 GMT from United States)
Docker Inc. has taken issue with some of the patches provided by Red Hat and others... and has been seen by some as adverse to patches that they believe might impact their revenue stream (do they have one yet?). Red Hat/Fedora and others decided to maintain the non-accepted patches and maintain their own branches that they provided with their distros... but after time, Red Hat decided just to make an alternative. That alternative, which can be found in EL7, EL8 and Fedora (and some other distros), is podman. podman is a fairly capable clone of Docker that doesn't use a big-fat-daemon... and has excelled in unprivileged containers using all of the cgroup resource controls including User namespace.
I'd also like to mention that system containers came *long before* the application container style that Docker introduced in 2014. The commercial Virtuozzo came out in 2001 whereas Linux Vserver and OpenVZ came out in the 2005. Canonical is a big sponsor of system containers as well with their LXD container hypervisor (that now offers KVM VM support as well).
Thus ends your container public service announcement.
21 • Docker works for me (by Casual Docker User on 2020-09-15 01:32:52 GMT from United States)
I just recently got around to checking out docker containers for use on my VPS and love how easy it is to just download and deploy something that immediately works. Minimal configuration, the containers restart if I need to reboot the server, I don't have anything messing with the configuration of anything else and everything just seems to work. Super easy to upgrade too. Only real complaint I've had is that permissions can be touchy between the host and container so some programs have needed kind of labyrinthine commands to be passed when interacting with them. They seem to be well documented though. I don't know if it would be good or bad on an enterprise level but for someone like me who is running a media/irc server it's been nothing but a smooth transition.
22 • BSD issues, or not (by TheTKS on 2020-09-15 02:34:31 GMT from Canada)
I’ve had OpenBSD installed with Xfce on two different computers. I haven’t run into most of the issues others have reported here. Installed and booted fine on the computers I wanted to run it on.
I have also tried live and/or installed FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, GhostBSD and TrueOS on several computers. Some did not detect either the ethernet or wifi cards, some I didn’t manage to install, at least one failed to boot sometimes.
Success with BSDs seems to be hardware+software specific, maybe more so than Linux distros - maybe - but I got more than just OpenBSD to install, boot and display properly.
I went with OpenBSD because I prefer that BSD’s goal of (as I put it) clean, lean and mean code, and it has just worked on my hardware. Xfce has given me minor hassles on OpenBSD, but no more problems overall than I’ve run into on any Linux.
TKS
23 • using Docker (by Simon Wainscott-Plaistowe on 2020-09-15 08:21:39 GMT from New Zealand)
Although I don't currently use Docker, I plan to do so soon. I shall be trialing UrBackup on OpenMediaVault. Seems Docker is the way to do it. Has anyone else tried this & how well did it work for you?
24 • OpenBSD (by gplcoder on 2020-09-15 13:30:07 GMT from Canada)
@22 +1,
I build OpenBSD from the ISO also with Xfce but I have had lots of hardware where X will not run. Especially on laptops.
25 • OpenMediaVault (by gplcoder on 2020-09-15 13:36:31 GMT from Canada)
I don't use Docker, have not found a need for it but,
I have lots of experience with OpenMediaVault. I tried for days (both V5 and then V4) to get this to run without success. It was a nightmare for me. I found this app to be very sensitive to hardware differences. For example, it was OpenMediaValult that caused me to find out that Dell uses two different SATA protocols (3-6gb/s on the primary channel and 2-3gb/s on all the other channels).
26 • BSD in general (by Otis on 2020-09-15 14:49:07 GMT from United States)
Well.. feh.. googling and duckduckgoing around for various BSD reviews and blog write-ups I find an inordinate amount of angst, not at this or that BSD version every time, but just BSD in general as a "partially developed" or "immature" operating system.
"Immature?" This thing is ancient in the computing world; began in 1977. For some reason the development has lagged sorely behind Linux as to compatibility with the computing hardware world. I don't get it.. I confess.. I'm dumbfounded.
Please educate me; is this a dynamic of our dear Mr. Torvalds kernel upkeep being superior to what the Berkeley folks set into motion? Does it have to do with focus on Linux in general by more devs out there? I honestly don't know why BSD seems to lag in not just numbers of users (looking at DW's page hit rankings) but resolution of issues that most Linux distros seem to consider primitive (boot/reboot problems, etc).
27 • BSD (by Jyrki on 2020-09-15 18:06:41 GMT from Czechia)
Happy OpenBSD user. OpenBSD works for me fine on two laptops and HTPC. On some machines suspend and hibernate functions were not working but that's not a stopper. Especially hibernate is something I don't use at all. I also run DragonflyBSD on some machines. And I experienced more issues - especially with wifi. NetBSD - when I tried this one, I had no suspend / hibernate at all, sensors were not working - eg battery status on laptop. FreeBSD - I had the worst experience of all BSDs.
28 • @26 BSD in general (by Robert on 2020-09-15 18:07:00 GMT from United States)
The way I usually hear it, back in the 90's there was a lot of fear of lawsuits from SCO against BSD's, being originally derived from Unix code unlike Linux.
By the time that got sorted out Linux had gotten off the ground and BSD never recovered. There are large users of bad (eg netflix) but Linux gets far more attention and resources.
Compound that with license issues - Linux is able to lift useful code from the BSD's with no issue. Going the other direction is more difficult (impossible?) Due to gpl license.
29 • Firejail (by hotdiggettydog on 2020-09-15 18:53:33 GMT from Canada)
@19 Thanks for mentioning Firejail. It doesn't get much publicity and it should.
It is actively developed and a superb tool. I know its in the ubuntu repository and kept current. Not sure about the others.
I use it mainly for locking down browsers. Can't be too careful nowadays.
30 • #28 (by Essexsun on 2020-09-15 19:15:50 GMT from United Kingdom)
Please do your research. SCO were infamously trying to sue virtually anyone (including GNU/Linux) for violating their code. They were, rightly, decimated in the justice system. Especially by IBM. They are but a shadow of their former selves. The BSDs are doing fine, thank you very much. I have been using GNU/Linux applications on FreeBSD with no problems.
There is plenty of information on the SCO debacle online.
31 • #30 (by Robert on 2020-09-15 20:12:48 GMT from United States)
The case I was thinking of was USL vs BSDi, 1992. Settled out of court 1994 following a purge of at&t Unix code. I misremembered it as part of SCO's nonsense. My apologies.
While they were legally clear after that, perceptions linger.
I stand by the rest of my comment. I wasn't talking about applications you might find in ports, which if course may be gpl. I was talking about core operating system code, where the BSD's try to avoid gpl wherever possible.
32 • Docker is useful but not all-round (by Coco on 2020-09-16 04:40:24 GMT from United States)
The best thing about Docker is it runs on Linux/FreeBSD/Windows/macOS/etc.
Docker is dead simple if you run stateless applications in it. But becomes very ugly if you want to save states. It is a good thing, and forces me to separate user data and logic.
33 • Todays feature - GhostBSD (by barnabyh on 2020-09-16 13:14:54 GMT from Germany)
GhostBSD does a new, updated image almost monthly. The ones from early this year worked well, at least for me, so I wonder if installing an earlier image and updating from there would be an option for those really wanting to run it. May work better.
34 • BSD & Linux development (by M.Z. on 2020-09-16 23:25:21 GMT from United States)
From what I've been able to learn over the years BSDs generally have smaller & more close knit development teams who try to create a more consistent product that follows the standards & methodologies set forth by the BSD core team, though they move more slowly. Linux on the other had has large numbers of volunteers & huge numbers of paid corporate devs who are constantly trying huge numbers of completely different things & are constantly changing the kernel & other things related to the GNU/Linux OS. Large numbers of new things get implemented & continuously developed, though others are tried then disappear or move into support only status in a relatively short time. As a couple of examples you can look into the large number of init systems & desktop environments that were created as a part of various Linux projects, but which have become semi-abandoned.
On the whole Linux has more developers, including hardware makers, more speed & more momentum than the BSDs as far as support goes. I believe the @28, 30, & 31 comments related to a lawsuit over using 'it's Unix' as a part of a campaign to promote some new BSDi prior to the USL v. BSDi lawsuit. The fallout blunted the development speed of BSD as described & created the space for Linux to takeoff.
I'm not sure how much of the speed of Linux development has to do with the way Linus & other senior Linux devs do things, how much has to do with general preference for the GPL vs only being able to convert BSD licensed software to GPL & not the other way around, & how much has to to with the ever increasing number of devs & the sheer momentum behind Linux; however, Linux certainly evolves faster & has more users of Linux for many use cases where Linux & BSD compete. A lot of it is probably related to number of developers. Some may be because OSs like Apple/Mac OS-X can take from BSD without necessarily giving back because of how the BSD license works. Some of it also seems to be related to more iterative design in Linux, like SpaceX building so many Starship prototypes & blowing them up before building a better one, while BSDs move a bit more like the Boeing SLS, which has been engineered & re-engineered 10 times over before a finished near feature complete prototype ever gets built. That last one is a strong impression I have been give from the attitude of some BSD related web sites I've read, though SpaceX vs Boeing may be exaggerating things a bit. At any rate I'd argue there are a large number of factors contributing to the speed of Linux support & development compared to BSD.
35 • BSD development vs Linux (by Otis on 2020-09-17 00:01:18 GMT from United States)
@34 M.Z. I like getting educated and you educated me, as did Robert.
What keeps creeping into my thinking is that the development of BSD being pinched off by all of the factors and dynamics you outline are resulting in an inferior operating system? Or is the BSD schema described by you and Robert just not as inviting as Linux?
And (other half of the question) we see a good ride with more Linux distros to the point of people getting bored and wanting to distro hop and even collect several distros on one hard drive just to fool around with perfectly good running systems. Not so with BSD that I've ever seen alluded to in comments areas here or elsewhere, except perhaps in a BSD version forum
In other words, simply, is BSD just not as good as Linux, and is that what's showing in its lack of popularity?
36 • What is good? (by igor on 2020-09-17 09:17:58 GMT from Croatia)
@35 A decade or even more ago a FreeBSD server held the world uptime record with more than three years, a remarkable achievement considering that BSDs made about 5% of server OSs at the time. It is the consequence of the BSDs teams' development strategies as described by MZ. Once up and running, it is unbreakable, intrusion resilient, easily handling zillions of requests while requiring a fraction of resources compared even to Linuces. That makes the BSDs really good in a way, and they are getting better all the time. On the other hand, a good recent desktop Linux distro can easily be installed by a totally CLI ignorant person, and it is going to serve this role mostly well, without major glitches. To put this into a big picture, no one actually installs Windows, and no one at all installs Android sweating to make the stuff work. People get it all done, because, after all, they paid for it. I only recently met anything BSD desktop to compare with the desktop Linux ease of installation and use in Nomad BSD. Desktop systems have to meet a different set of demands and expectations. It is not only down to GUI versus CLI. The scope and versatility of demands are much higher in personal non-professional or semi-professional desktop computing. Take just this one example: typical server and typical smartphone are normally interfacing only a network, compared to a network, a screen, a keyboard, a mouse, a printer, a scanner, a camera... a home cinema... In the personal desktop world you do not even want the OS that doesn't waver for years, as the hardware and the use turns by at least 30 degrees in three years time. If it were the other way, the venerable Slackware would have been the most popular distro. Bear in mind that BSD was and is foremost university driven, from the very beginning. It is supposed to drive things like Her Majesty PostgreSQL. How many personal desktop users do actually need such a high shot, where the embedded SQLite does the job? BSDs definitely lag behind in the DE implementation and consumers' hardware recognition. This translates into a steep learning curve, much work to get it going, and those are the formulas of the (un)popularity.
37 • @35: (by dragonmouth on 2020-09-17 12:44:39 GMT from United States)
BSD is not trying to join or replace Windows on the desktop. The attitude among the BSD crowd is "We are what we are. If you don't like it, go somewhere else." BSD does not try to cater to the refugees from Windows or OS/X. BSD today is what Linux was 20 years ago.
38 • BSD World (by Otis on 2020-09-17 19:44:56 GMT from United States)
Thanks dragonmouth @37 and Igor @36 as my education continues. That, "BSD today is what Linux was 20 years ago" seems to wrap things up rather well, it it's true, and I don't mean if you're right or wrong about that notion, but if that notion is alluding to what's making BSD so crappy in 2020 after being born decades ago.
But, sorry BSD freaks, I don't like it as it is and I'm going to say so and I'm also going to stick with installing and trying it, especially GhostBSD, for the foreseeable future. Nyah-nyah-nyah. ;o)
39 • BSDs (by M.Z. on 2020-09-17 22:29:11 GMT from United States)
From what I've heard, #36 is fairly on point regarding up time & robustness. As I recall there was some talk coming out of Netflix staff that the BSDs can perform beautifully under heavy loads which made comparable Linux Distros choke & start to freeze up. I also recall hearing about situations where some of the BSD security tools like the PF firewall end up saving a lot of time & effort if you know how to use them. The BSD makers do seem more driven by software engineering principles & the Linux makers more by the seat of their pants, but there is no inherent superiority like between SpaceX Dragon & Boeing Starliner. That being said Linux is a lot more successful at adapting to new situations & generally works a lot better on the desktop, while BSD keeps chugging along like the proverbial tortoise & doing some extremely heavy lifting for Netflix & some other folks who swear by it.
40 • BSD (by anonymous on 2020-09-18 17:21:56 GMT from United States)
@38
As a BSD user, I can most certainly assure you that we don't care what you like or don't like. We are secure enough within our choice of OS that we don't need to convince others to use it. The people that use a BSD are doing so because it is great for their particular use case. It may be crappy to you, but it works just fine for them, and it allows them to get their job done. That is the only thing that truly matters.
You must understand that the BSD's are not jealous of Apple or Microsoft, and they are not obsessed with popularity or market share. They are not trying to become the next Windows, and they are not trying to appeal to Windows users. They focus on their own main goals such as portability, servers, security, etc. and ignore whatever isn't a part of their goals. They are building and maintaining something that they like and derive effective use from, and that is all that they care about. Whether other people use it or not is of no concern to them, really.
If you like what they're doing and you decide to use a BSD, then that's awesome, but nobody really cares, and nobody is going to give you a high five or pat you on the back just for merely using an OS. If it is crappy to you and you choose something else, then nobody really cares about that, either. Outside of the workplace, no mature, well adjusted person is going to care about what you put on your personal computer. You should always use what works best for your individual use case, regardless of what it is named, and that is the general attitude that you would come across in the BSD world.
41 • BSD pop culture (by vern on 2020-09-18 23:01:53 GMT from United States)
@40 Well stated! I don't use BSD, I have in the past, but I understand it fills their needs just fine.
42 • GhostBSD is well... pretty good (by JJ on 2020-09-19 08:36:31 GMT from Japan)
Desktop BSDs are either easy or impossible and it almost always boils down to graphics card support or poor auto-detection and auto-configuration of graphics cards. Otherwise they're rock solid. For GhostBSD, I found most success with the XFCE version. Not sure why. I have always struggled to get my Radeon cards setup right with any BSD to get X going. Using Intel integrated was doable, but not well-configured by me. You'll have a hard time truly out performing the stability of FreeBSD as a no-desktop system. Updates are smooth, unless you've configured some really custom stuff.
43 • BD (by Otis on 2020-09-19 23:56:27 GMT from United States)
@40 "..we don't care what you like or don't like.."
You care very much or you would never have posted that.
44 • I think therefore I am [easily impressed] (by realitybytes on 2020-09-20 07:28:19 GMT from United States)
@40 I believe you made some accurate remarks. Except they are accurate for any OS ever made. The only people who do care about OS marketshare are those making walled gardens that try to lure you in and throw away the key. They care because their salaries depend on it.
But you seem to contradict yourself unintentionally. "They focus on their own main goals such as portability, servers, security, etc. and ignore whatever isn't a part of their goals. They are building and maintaining something that they like and derive effective use from, and that is all that they care about. Whether other people use it or not is of no concern to them, really." Those are very important goals. But if what you say about BSD developers is true, wouldn't that mean they are self-centered and see BSD as a product 'by and for themselves only.' There would be no reason to make BSD distros easy to access by outsiders. I would go so far as to say they would have no use for the BSD licensing model. My hypothesis is that they are working on BSD because they like it, and they want people looking for an OS with the qualities you listed to find and use BSD. Some of those people may go on to contribute too, ensuring that BSD will outlive its current developers/users.
This has nothing to do with chasing Apple or Microsoft for marketshare. But at the same time, they want themselves and others to be able to use BSD distros, and not on some 20 year old Amiga that's been stripped of Mouse support. I am exaggerating slightly. Seriously though, just like supporting poorly conceived hardware would not suit their development goals, having good support for a reasonably recent and broad set of hardware would be beneficial for their own use cases and make the OS useful to others. Hardware upgrades become necessary sooner or later. Plus, there are plenty of people who want an OS with BSD's criteria but need to run it on hardware that is efficient such as newer, less energy demanding systems, or fast hardware that would truly amaze when coupled with an Operating System that is portable, efficient in busy server use cases, secure, etc.
I won't get into GUIs and such, except to say taking a glance at BSD distros I see enough of them think Desktop and Web management GUI interoperability are legitimate areas to delve into for some, and their efforts shouldn't be discounted any more than the work others put into other areas.
Personally, I like technology in general. I am a hands-on type of person. I may not have high level computer engineering skills, but I enjoyed putting together my LAN including setting up a pfSense box (my most recent foray into the BSD style). I've run Windows and Linux servers in the cloud. Now I help run a small business in a field where data security matters a lot, and I am thinking ahead to when I will need tackle some important data backup/recovery/security scenarios, and BSD (and Linux) solutions are very likely to be in the mix.
I'm not put off by shells and command lines. But I do wish BSD was closer to Linux by now. Especially when it comes to Desktop style usage and hardware support. Then I could look at BSDs not only as efficient server/appliance environments, but also as an option to push out of the network closet and into the front office. I believe people are working hard on these things, and it's only a matter of time. I want more people to find their BSD on-ramps. BSD has the potential to do many things very well, not by imitating, but by growing organically and maintaining its own strengths.
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• Issue 1071 (2024-05-20): Archcraft 2024.04.06, common command line mistakes, ReactOS imports WINE improvements, Haiku makes adjusting themes easier, NetBSD takes a stand against code generated by chatbots |
• Issue 1070 (2024-05-13): Damn Small Linux 2024, hiding kernel messages during boot, Red Hat offers AI edition, new web browser for UBports, Fedora Asahi Remix 40 released, Qubes extends support for version 4.1 |
• Issue 1069 (2024-05-06): Ubuntu 24.04, installing packages in alternative locations, systemd creates sudo alternative, Mint encourages XApps collaboration, FreeBSD publishes quarterly update |
• Issue 1068 (2024-04-29): Fedora 40, transforming one distro into another, Debian elects new Project Leader, Red Hat extends support cycle, Emmabuntus adds accessibility features, Canonical's new security features |
• Issue 1067 (2024-04-22): LocalSend for transferring files, detecting supported CPU architecure levels, new visual design for APT, Fedora and openSUSE working on reproducible builds, LXQt released, AlmaLinux re-adds hardware support |
• Issue 1066 (2024-04-15): Fun projects to do with the Raspberry Pi and PinePhone, installing new software on fixed-release distributions, improving GNOME Terminal performance, Mint testing new repository mirrors, Gentoo becomes a Software In the Public Interest project |
• Issue 1065 (2024-04-08): Dr.Parted Live 24.03, answering questions about the xz exploit, Linux Mint to ship HWE kernel, AlmaLinux patches flaw ahead of upstream Red Hat, Calculate changes release model |
• Issue 1064 (2024-04-01): NixOS 23.11, the status of Hurd, liblzma compromised upstream, FreeBSD Foundation focuses on improving wireless networking, Ubuntu Pro offers 12 years of support |
• Issue 1063 (2024-03-25): Redcore Linux 2401, how slowly can a rolling release update, Debian starts new Project Leader election, Red Hat creating new NVIDIA driver, Snap store hit with more malware |
• Issue 1062 (2024-03-18): KDE neon 20240304, changing file permissions, Canonical turns 20, Pop!_OS creates new software centre, openSUSE packages Plasma 6 |
• Issue 1061 (2024-03-11): Using a PinePhone as a workstation, restarting background services on a schedule, NixBSD ports Nix to FreeBSD, Fedora packaging COSMIC, postmarketOS to adopt systemd, Linux Mint replacing HexChat |
• Issue 1060 (2024-03-04): AV Linux MX-23.1, bootstrapping a network connection, key OpenBSD features, Qubes certifies new hardware, LXQt and Plasma migrate to Qt 6 |
• Issue 1059 (2024-02-26): Warp Terminal, navigating manual pages, malware found in the Snap store, Red Hat considering CPU requirement update, UBports organizes ongoing work |
• Issue 1058 (2024-02-19): Drauger OS 7.6, how much disk space to allocate, System76 prepares to launch COSMIC desktop, UBports changes its version scheme, TrueNAS to offer faster deduplication |
• Issue 1057 (2024-02-12): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta, rolling release vs fixed for a smoother experience, Debian working on 2038 bug, elementary OS to split applications from base system updates, Fedora announces Atomic Desktops |
• Issue 1056 (2024-02-05): wattOS R13, the various write speeds of ISO writing tools, DSL returns, Mint faces Wayland challenges, HardenedBSD blocks foreign USB devices, Gentoo publishes new repository, Linux distros patch glibc flaw |
• Issue 1055 (2024-01-29): CNIX OS 231204, distributions patching packages the most, Gentoo team presents ongoing work, UBports introduces connectivity and battery improvements, interview with Haiku developer |
• Issue 1054 (2024-01-22): Solus 4.5, comparing dd and cp when writing ISO files, openSUSE plans new major Leap version, XeroLinux shutting down, HardenedBSD changes its build schedule |
• Issue 1053 (2024-01-15): Linux AI voice assistants, some distributions running hotter than others, UBports talks about coming changes, Qubes certifies StarBook laptops, Asahi Linux improves energy savings |
• Issue 1052 (2024-01-08): OpenMandriva Lx 5.0, keeping shell commands running when theterminal closes, Mint upgrades Edge kernel, Vanilla OS plans big changes, Canonical working to make Snap more cross-platform |
• Issue 1051 (2024-01-01): Favourite distros of 2023, reloading shell settings, Asahi Linux releases Fedora remix, Gentoo offers binary packages, openSUSE provides full disk encryption |
• Issue 1050 (2023-12-18): rlxos 2023.11, renaming files and opening terminal windows in specific directories, TrueNAS publishes ZFS fixes, Debian publishes delayed install media, Haiku polishes desktop experience |
• Issue 1049 (2023-12-11): Lernstick 12, alternatives to WINE, openSUSE updates its branding, Mint unveils new features, Lubuntu team plans for 24.04 |
• Issue 1048 (2023-12-04): openSUSE MicroOS, the transition from X11 to Wayland, Red Hat phasing out X11 packages, UBports making mobile development easier |
• Issue 1047 (2023-11-27): GhostBSD 23.10.1, Why Linux uses swap when memory is free, Ubuntu Budgie may benefit from Wayland work in Xfce, early issues with FreeBSD 14.0 |
• Issue 1046 (2023-11-20): Slackel 7.7 "Openbox", restricting CPU usage, Haiku improves font handling and software centre performance, Canonical launches MicroCloud |
• Issue 1045 (2023-11-13): Fedora 39, how to trust software packages, ReactOS booting with UEFI, elementary OS plans to default to Wayland, Mir gaining ability to split work across video cards |
• Issue 1044 (2023-11-06): Porteus 5.01, disabling IPv6, applications unique to a Linux distro, Linux merges bcachefs, OpenELA makes source packages available |
• Issue 1043 (2023-10-30): Murena Two with privacy switches, where old files go when packages are updated, UBports on Volla phones, Mint testing Cinnamon on Wayland, Peppermint releases ARM build |
• Issue 1042 (2023-10-23): Ubuntu Cinnamon compared with Linux Mint, extending battery life on Linux, Debian resumes /usr merge, Canonical publishes fixed install media |
• Issue 1041 (2023-10-16): FydeOS 17.0, Dr.Parted 23.09, changing UIDs, Fedora partners with Slimbook, GNOME phasing out X11 sessions, Ubuntu revokes 23.10 install media |
• Issue 1040 (2023-10-09): CROWZ 5.0, changing the location of default directories, Linux Mint updates its Edge edition, Murena crowdfunding new privacy phone, Debian publishes new install media |
• Issue 1039 (2023-10-02): Zenwalk Current, finding the duration of media files, Peppermint OS tries out new edition, COSMIC gains new features, Canonical reports on security incident in Snap store |
• Issue 1038 (2023-09-25): Mageia 9, trouble-shooting launchers, running desktop Linux in the cloud, New documentation for Nix, Linux phasing out ReiserFS, GNU celebrates 40 years |
• Issue 1037 (2023-09-18): Bodhi Linux 7.0.0, finding specific distros and unified package managemnt, Zevenet replaced by two new forks, openSUSE introduces Slowroll branch, Fedora considering dropping Plasma X11 session |
• Issue 1036 (2023-09-11): SDesk 2023.08.12, hiding command line passwords, openSUSE shares contributor survery results, Ubuntu plans seamless disk encryption, GNOME 45 to break extension compatibility |
• Full list of all issues |
Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
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Random Distribution |
ClearOS
ClearOS was a small business server operating system with server, networking, and gateway functions. It was designed primarily for homes, small, medium, and distributed environments. It was managed from a web based user interface, but can also be completely managed and tuned from the command line. ClearOS was available in a free Community Edition, which includes available open source updates and patches from its upstream sources. ClearOS was also offered in a Home and Business Edition which receives additional testing of updates and only uses tested code for updates. Professional tech-support was also available. Currently ClearOS offers around 100+ different features which can be installed through the onboard ClearOS Marketplace.
Status: Discontinued
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TUXEDO |
TUXEDO Computers - Linux Hardware in a tailor made suite Choose from a wide range of laptops and PCs in various sizes and shapes at TUXEDOComputers.com. Every machine comes pre-installed and ready-to-run with Linux. Full 24 months of warranty and lifetime support included!
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Star Labs |
Star Labs - Laptops built for Linux.
View our range including the highly anticipated StarFighter. Available with coreboot open-source firmware and a choice of Ubuntu, elementary, Manjaro and more. Visit Star Labs for information, to buy and get support.
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