PC-BSD review

KDE 3.5

I have seen KDE 3.5 only from screenshots taken from kubuntu on some site. I don’t know what a default KDE 3.5 installation looks like so I can’t comment on that. Some alteration are obvious ofcourse.

[you'll have to look at osdir for a screenshot of this, since I couldn't get one transferred to my windows machine]

There’s the PC-BSD wallpaper, and the PC-BSD menu graphic. A bigger change from other distros such as kubuntu and Suse is probably the KDE menu.

[another screenhost from osdir]

Notice how there’s a separation: KDE programs versus other programs. I sort of like this. I don’t care how my programs are not grouped together. I’m used to this on Windows and have never had any trouble finding a program.If I had to choose, I’d prefer to have my installed programs together like in PC-BSD. But that’s probably just personal bias and some will prefer it the other way, with a default grouping of programs.

There aren’t much programs installed by default, which I find a nice thing. After all, I’ll download the ones I would like to have and install them. But like in the above mentioned case, for some this will be a turn-off as they would like the system to be ready with the latest version of some packages (OpenOffice.org for example). From a user choice perspective, I prefer the way it is now: a base system (maybe even too much programs installed already) and I will do the rest according to my wishes.

What I didn’t like

There are some things I think that can be improved upon. Remember, as I don’t have much experience with all of this, it may be something that PC-BSD is not responsible for.

-I didn’t notice an update check for Firefox.
-The PC-BSD options in the KDE menu could have been organized better. There were “settings” in the KDE-programs submenu and under “action” in the main menu, both with same icon but with different things to set. These could have been integrated or so.
-My floppydrive and cd-rom were unmountable. I also failed as root. Probably easy if you know how, but not interesting if you want a ready machine.
-I didn’t found a resolution greater than 1024×786 to be set, meaning I would have to go into configuration files.
-I would prefer if there was an uninstall option in the programs menu of the particular program instead of having to go to the “uninstall manager”.
-I would like to see an option where to install a certain package during installation. But I know I know nothing about installing packages on linux or bsd, so don’t know how reasonable that is.
-The bootsplash: either none or keep it up to the point where KDE starts loading.
-After enabling root login in KDE and trying to switch to root (I know, I know) KDE failed to let me log in and hanged when there was a floppy and cd-rom in the drives. At that point, I only knew how to reboot. After removing the floppy and cd-rom I could login.

Except for the floppydrive problem and the resolution these things aren’t really annoying for a lay user like me. Since I believe PC-BSD was made for lay users too, maybe these two things could be improved upon.