PC-BSD review
What I need to get used to
-Bigger download packages.
-Getting root access to do some things, like editing files with only admin privileges.
-I know my way around in Windows pretty well, but I’ll have to start over completely.
Final verdict
If there were more packages available I probably would have tried this one as my permanent desktop and installed it on its own partition. I need an AMP environment however, and for now there is only an Apache package available. Mysql and PHP are being made as a .pbi, I have heard, but until they are there, and work, I can’t really use it.
Also, it would be nice if CrossOver office was made available so I could test sites in IE.
All in all I found it very promising. If there is one distribution that really has its eye on users like me, while still keeping all possibilities for advanced users (the FreeBSD underneath), its PC-BSD. There are other similar “package-systems” to the one PC-BSD uses, but so far the .pbi packages really stand out. Anyone who can install a windows executable should have no trouble using PC-BSD. And isn’t what we all want: converting Windows users to an opensource system?
May I suggest Kororaa to you? It is a Gentoo based distro. it has an incredible amount of available software (22.000+). Which can as easily be installed as apt-get trough the kuroo installer. I consider myself still a newbie but Kororoaa is the one that helped me to learn linux.
More info:
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kororaa
http://kororaa.org/
Comment by HXC — January 26, 2006 @ 3:36 pm
Hey HXC,
Thanks for the comment. I’ll surely take a closer look at it.
Comment by dissurion — January 26, 2006 @ 4:17 pm
You might want to try Kanotix. You can test drive
it from the cd drive as its a live distro. Of course
you only really see it in action when its on the hard drive…
After slackware, debian, mandriva, ubuntu, kubuntu, gentoo, fedora and vector, I have settled on this one. (Though of course I’m bound to try a few
others).
I run a dual boot: Freebsd and Kanotix. Freebsd is
an absolute cracker of a system, but it takes work to make it behave… In Linux I was looking for something that just worked, wanting a fullyautomatic system next to my freebsd (something that would help get the wife interested in life beyond windows), and figuring that with all the desktop development going on, there should be something usable out there.
Anyway, the wife still uses windows on her machine, but I have hopes for my daughter with Kanotix…
Comment by pparada — January 27, 2006 @ 3:59 am
What about Xandros? It is almost too close to windows, but the business version with crossover office is slick.
Comment by kevwit — January 27, 2006 @ 8:17 pm
By the way to change conf. files you don’t need to log in as root simply go to menu and choose run and after type kdesu i believe is like this name of editor vi or another one and the path to the file after pwd and that’s it.. cheers i tested pc-bsd from 0.7 beta till now mixed with a lot of linux distros
Comment by Duarte — January 30, 2006 @ 6:04 am
I’m a real big fan of PC-BSD’s lesser known cousin, DesktopBSD. It’s an easy to run desktop, but you don’t have the problems introduced by running .pbi’s. Instead, it uses a synaptic-like front-end to ports. Every file is built from source, so no conflicts with .pbi’s, and no messing around with command line syntax to install packages.
In the end, however, I find that FreeBSD and it’s derivatives just don’t have the hardware compatibility that I need, so I stick with debian derivatives and suse.
Comment by Morgan — February 3, 2006 @ 2:02 am
Nice review, very windows centric. But that’s not a problem since I’m a windows junkie. I love to use windows, but always eager to try other system. PCBSD is one of my favorites like debian or slack
Comment by dwilicious — February 3, 2006 @ 8:54 am