PC-BSD 7.1 Released With Integrated Software Manager

Death Metal writes "PC-BSD 7.1 is built upon the FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE operating system. FreeBSD is a UNIX-based operating system that provides a high level of security and stability. The Galileo Edition of PC-BSD includes updated versions of KDE (4.2.2) and Xorg (7.4). The latest version of KDE includes new window effects, screen savers, and better 3D Acceleration. PC-BSD exclusively features the Push Button Installer, a software installation wizard with a wide range of applications. The latest version improves PBI self-containment to increase reliability. The Add / Remove Programs tool and the Update Manager have been consolidated into 'Software & Updates.'"

10 gigs?

[FudRucker]

of disk space for a friggin OS is just crazy! i like FreeBSD & PCBSD, but it is getting bloated!

i have the disk space (500gigs), but i would have to re-arrange some disk partitions which means i would have to burn several DVDs of backup so i don't lose data, you would think any OS would keep t3h bloat below 5 gigs!

Re:10 gigs?

[jdong]

It's a natural tradeoff when every application is designed to be self-contained. This is the same issue Mac OS X faces with its .app bundles -- each app basically ships a /usr like prefix with all of its dependencies on top of the base OS X API's, and application startup times on cold cache pales to a shared-dependency approach.

Re:

[samriel]

Yeah, your analogy? Not so much. OSX apps are just
a) a startup script that is auto-run on launch,
b)the .NIB/.XIB interface files,
c) some images, etc. that the application needs to display, and
d) the executable itself.

If you spend any time at all looking through the guts of an OSX system, you'll notice that all the shared dependencies reside within the /Library or /(user)/Library folders.

The reason that a lot of OSX apps are large (not many are huge) is because the developers choose to make one big ap

Re:

[samriel]

^^^Because I know I'm going to get called out, the dependencies live in /Library or /Users/(user)Library, not /(user)/Library.^^^

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You should look at most that use libraries *on top of* the base OS X libraries. Most will include the thid party .framework bundle within the .app bundle, very few will install or use an existing third party .framework in ~/Library or /Library.

Re:

[JonLatane]

Well, first off, dependencies are, much more often than just the "Library" directories, in their own "Framework" directories. Check /System/Library/Frameworks for the important core Mac OS X frameworks and /Library/Frameworks for your basic system frameworks. You've also probably got a ~/Library/Frameworks directory but there's probably nothing interesting in there unless you're a developer. The rest of the "Library" directories consists more of non-reusable stuff.

However, plenty of applications do jus

Re:

[bonch]

This is the same issue Mac OS X faces with its .app bundles -- each app basically ships a /usr like prefix with all of its dependencies on top of the base OS X API's, and application startup times on cold cache pales to a shared-dependency approach.

This is inaccurate. OS X apps link to shared system frameworks in /Library/Frameworks. They can, if they wish, embed a framework in their bundle which will appear in the bundle's internal Frameworks directory. There is no /usr dependency hierarchy in every app

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[bonch]

No, there is not a "substantial amount of applications" that bundle their own frameworks.

Re:

[phantomcircuit]

That would be because PC-BSD includes a ton of stuff in the default installation. I'm sure you can get it down to much less than that fairly easily.

Re:

[FudRucker]

if the OS installer would let you

Re:

[Sneeka2]

Vista default installation ~= 15GB
Obligatory M$ analogy = FAIL

Re:

[colinrichardday]

Bloated, or featureful? Does Vista include a decent text editor? Compilers? Server software?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[GMFTatsujin]

Reconciling "Average user" with "BSD installation" ... *pzzzt* *poing* *fotz* (mushroom cloud erupts from brain)

Re:

[colinrichardday]

Yes.

Re:10 gigs?

[palegray.net]

While I understand your point in principle, storage is beyond dirt cheap these days. I have a hard time finding laptops with less than a 100 GB drive, and a 1.5 TB drive can be had for $130 on Newegg.

Re:10 gigs?

[Cyberax]

My new SSD drive is 64 GB and 10 GB is NOT a small amount.

Ubuntu works just fine with a fraction of that space.

Re:

[Nimey]

Then PC-BSD 7.1 is not for you. Good thing other operating systems work for you, isn't it?

Re:

[Architect_sasyr]

Well we could just point him at the cut down installer for PC-BSD that lets him pick and choose his packages. You know, the one found at http://www.freebsd.org/ [freebsd.org]

Re:

[palegray.net]

I'm typing this reply on a laptop running Ubuntu 8.10. It fits my needs for most development and administration tasks, but the needs of others (such as those interested in running PC-BSD) may vary. I choose hardware and operating system combinations according to the task they're going to perform, with occasional allowances for OS requirements. It's part of the process, and technology marches on.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[BrainInAJar]

I thought IPv6 was implemented first on a BSD distribution before Linux?

Hell, NFSv3 ( a completely open standard! ) still doesn't work correctly 14 years later...

Re:10 gigs? (So what?)

[Garridan]

Welcome to the 21st century. Downloading 10GB takes a while, but I've got 80GB free on my *laptop* -- and I have three 20GB disk images for virtual machines. Disk space is cheap. If you've got 500GB and you don't have 10GB of contiguous free space... no, you probably don't want to install a new operating system.

Most operating systems (I'm not talking about Haiku or FreeDOS obviously) are meant to be installed on a clean system with a significant amount of hard drive space. What's the problem? I see non

Re:

[tomhudson]

i would have to burn several DVDs of backup so i don't lose data

Ah, the naiveté of youth ...

Real BSD users set up an rsync box.

Depending on burned dvds for backup is like depending on pulling out to prevent contraception. Ask Bristol Palin how well that form of "safe sex" worked out. When you lose your data, be sure to post the story to fmylife.com so we can all laugh at your angst- and hubris-filled story [fmylife.com].

Re:

[jmastrol]

I was kind of surprised at this requirement myself, but what is interesting is this: During installation you MUST create a 10G "/" partition. It isn't possible to create a 10G "/PCBSD", and then set the remaining partitions up as you would a "typical" FreeBSD system. Discovered this in the RC and thought it was odd. Granted, earlier releases would let you shoot yourself in the foot by creating too small "/" partition, but I think the partitioning wizard is a bit too restrictive IMHO.

Obligatory nitpicking.

[kwabbles]

I'm pretty sure it's based on 7.2 PRE, not 7.1. The summary also makes it look like the software manager is a new feature, which it is not. The PBI system has been around for a while in PC-BSD.

Re:

[FST777]

I'm pretty sure it's based on 7.2 PRE, not 7.1.

That is correct.

The official website states 7.2-PRERELEASE, but the press release says 7.1-STABLE. Depending on how you track and merge FreeBSD, both may be correct (tracking 7.1-STABLE and backporting functionality from 7.2 would do the trick).

Re:

[Fweeky]

Both 7.1-STABLE and 7.2-PRERELEASE are in the same branch; stable/7 or RELENG_7.

Re:

[FST777]

Ah, of course! I was confusing it with tracking a specific release, to get security fixes. Besides those, there are of course just two interesting branches: STABLE and CURRENT.

Re:

[kwabbles]

I just did a vmware install of it and uname shows 7.2-PRERELEASE. I wonder if that was a last minute thing.

What about XFS?

[TechForensics]

If PC-BSD has Sun XFS, I can't see a reason for it to tank. I know FreeBSD 7.1 has at least a beta implementation.

Re:What about XFS?

[jdong]

I'm quite sure you mean ZFS [wikipedia.org]. XFS [wikipedia.org] is SGI's popular journaling filesystem.

Re:What about [X | Z]FS?

[FST777]

Since it is in FreeBSD, it will be in PC-BSD.

I believe ZFS has been in FreeBSD since 7.0. A quick google teaches me that PC-BSD is enjoying it since then too.

Re:

[phantomcircuit]

ZFS in FreeBSD is still in alpha. Basically it consumes a huge amount of memory and kernel panics if you don't tune it correctly.

Re:

[Fweeky]

This has already been largely fixed in 7.1, with the kernel address space expanded to 6GB.

If you're still on 32bit, well, ZFS will hate you for that in Solaris too.

FreeNAS

[dimension6]

Right. It would sure be nice if the amd64 releases of FreeNAS 0.7 are continued (apparently, there's a kernel panic upon bootup preventing them from releasing the amd64 alpha versions). The current i386 version is limited to 512MB of kmem (unless the kernel is recompiled), which is DEFINITELY not enough for ZFS (even a 1GB allocation is insufficient). With my max allocation at 512MB, I've had the kernel panic about 5 times in one day while transferring large amounts of data.

My advice to those of you who are

Xorg 7.4?

[BikeHelmet]

How do I find out which version of Xorg I have?

A piece of software I wanted to install recently had two procedures - one for Xorg 7.0 and above, and one for earlier versions.

Xorg -version reports a lot of crap, but never a useful/comparable version number.

X.Org X Server 1.5.2
Release Date: 10 October 2008
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-19-server i686 Ubuntu
Current Operating System: Linux UbuntuViaBox 2.6.27-11-generic #1 SMP Wed Apr 1 20:57:48 UTC 2009 i686
Build Date: 09 March 2009 10:48:54AM
xorg-server 2:1.5.2-2ubuntu3.1 ([e-mail])
Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org/ [x.org]
to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present

I assumed I had at least 7.0...

Re:

[FST777]

That is definitely a version above 7.0. You are looking at the X Server, which is part of X.org. Seeing that it is released in October 2008, and judging by the version (1.5), I'd say it is either 7.3 or 7.4. My guess is the latter.

You want to follow the procedure for 7.0 and above.

A more decent way to check is by looking which packages are installed. Also, since you are using Ubuntu, you can check which release of X was about two months before the release of Ubuntu, that one will probably be in the di

Re:

[jdong]

An easier way to tell is to try to change some mouse settings. The longer it takes you to figure out where the hell they hid the setting NOW, the newer your Xorg. *ducks*

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that you're running Ubuntu, so to see your xorg version, try this:

aptitude show xserver-xorg

Re:Xorg 7.4?

[value_added]

How do I find out which version of Xorg I have?

The same as for version numbers for all your other other ports -- pkg_info(7)

pkg_info -Ex xorg

Unix based?

[thetoadwarrior]

FreeBSD is a UNIX-based operating system that provides a high level of security and stability

Maybe I'm wrong (never used Free BSD) but I didn't think it was based on Unix but instead Unix-like.

Re:

[Ian Alexander]

AIUI it, Bill Joy started BSD as a Pascal compiler and an alternate text-editor and grew from there into a project to rewrite UNIX to evade AT&T's copyrights. I wouldn't call the lack of a Pascal compiler a bug.

Re:

[Galactic Dominator]

Oh, thanks for sharing.

Re:Unix based?

[ducomputergeek]

BSD can be traced back to MaBell and Unix.

This video has a decent history of BSD in a nutshell:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7833143728685685343 [google.com]

It's linux that advertised itself as being "Unix-like".

livecd?

[Tibor the Hun]

Can the DVD download also be used as a live-cd? I'd like to see what it's like before installing.

Re:

[BrainInAJar]

It'll be exactly like every other operating system that uses X11.

I never understood the appeal of screenshots & livecd's. You can't judge an operating system or distro based on a slow & shitty disk and a half hour of un-demanding use

Re:

[Rynor]

Nobody is keeping you from adding the settings in xorg.conf, it just uses some defaults if they aren't there.

Re:

[Tibor the Hun]

It's useful to see how well it recognizes the hardware.

Re:livecd is great

[rusl]

It's vital for seeing how the OS recognises hardware. Sometimes even different versions of the same distribution will have major differences and the new one just doesn't work with a piece of hardware! Even if it only requires minor tweaking knowing that some important hardware (like a wifi card, or a RAID card!) is not going to work out of the box is pretty vital to doing a successful install.

So just like Ubuntu

[Gothmolly]

but with a different mascot, a different package manager, and different themes ?

Snark aside - what does this BSD do that any Linux distro or other BSD doesn't ?

Re:

[Ian Alexander]

It's just FreeBSD with KDE and a convenient package manager- in addition to ports and conventional binary packages PC-BSD also supports PBI's, which are closer to .app bundles that you find on OS X than a traditional Linux package. It also comes with a (imho) well-designed installer that makes installing faster and easier than the normal FBSD installer.

Basically, if you like FreeBSD and KDE but don't really have the time or inclination to set it all up yourself, PC-BSD is convenient.

Re:

[rusl]

Well, I'm just guessing but it may be more user friendly. Last time I tried BSD I didn't complete the install because:
A) the text based install gave me lots of options I didn't understand and I couldn't Google the answer because the network wasn't installed yet
B) I've already got a fine working linux install and I wasn't motivated to do much work to really install it - i just wanted to test/play. However, my avoidance of getting really into the details would be quite parallel to a newbie who really wants to

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

Synaptic installs applications with fewer clicks than anything on windows.

support base ..

[viralMeme]

The support forum [pcbsd.org] does seem to be popular. I wonder is now a good time to revive United Linux [wikipedia.org]?