What Features Do You Want in GhostBSD?

vimanuelt

What are the must-have features or tools that GhostBSD currently lacks? Is there something specific you frequently find yourself wishing for?

Snubbi

vimanuelt

I have a big wish . hunspell-da Because I can't use Danish spell check without hunspell-da in LibreOffice.

vimanuelt

Snubbi Wow. Hunspell-da (aka hunspell-danish) exists in other free/open source operating systems, but was not included in FreeBSD Ports. Writing office@freebsd.org and asking to have it included is needed. Also, this feature request is a good candidate for inclusion in the "Laptop and Desktop Workgroup (LDWG)" initiative.

brianthehughes

Mechanism to try/test XFCE or other desktops without blending applications.

Same scope, mechanism to adopt other desktop as preferred (removing current desktop and its applications)

vimanuelt

brianthehughes With ZFS at our disposal, we've got some intriguing new avenues to explore. Imagine setting up separate datasets, one with MATE as the default, and another with Xfce as default. It’s a fun experiment to consider. Just a heads up though, this approach could fatten up our ISO, pushing our memory needs to a solid 8 GiB.

brianthehughes

The System Tour on first launch.

Intro to Mate, panels, time date, network manager, desktops, core applications, etc

The 7-12 step this is your GhostBSD.

Want to know more…? Web links to community resources.

Want to get involved…? Web link to development resources.

vimanuelt

brianthehughes This idea isn't far off from some other suggestions we've floated around recently, like the Welcome window with shortcuts and the post-install configuration tool we've been chatting about. What if we rolled them all into one? Picture this: you finish the installation, and boom, a single screen pops up. It welcomes you aboard, gives you a quick tour, and lets you tweak some initial settings right off the bat. You could change your hostname, apply application profiles, and more, all from one handy spot.

brianthehughes

Pause/suspend updates. Disable notifications for updates.

vimanuelt

brianthehughes Maybe we should consider allowing updates to be postponed rather than disabled altogether. It's important, though, not to put them off for too long. Delaying updates excessively can lead to system breakages or even prevent future updates from being applied effectively.

hank2121

My last wish to get it complete on GhostBSD would be a graphical tool like Turboprint for Linux to see my ink levels of my Epson printer. Thought, there a re some ways via CUPS, but these scripts and perl steps are for developers or so...

vimanuelt

hank2121 It's a solid idea! Crafting a GUI wrapper for the escputil tool, which provides ink level information, is definitely doable. Keep in mind, though, escputil typically requires a USB connection. So, if users are hooking up to their Epson printers over a network, we're looking at a bit more legwork to get everything running smoothly. Since I have an Epson printer, it will be easy for me to get the USB support portion working quickly.

Snubbi

vimanuelt

Writing [office@freebsd.org](mailto:office@freebsd.org) and asking to have it included
Done

brianthehughes

vimanuelt
Or not do any of that. Classic check box to not show on start up. Leave unchecked for it to present itself upon reboot, not just a login. Should also present itself on first login of a new user.

brianthehughes

vimanuelt
Update Station notifications just kept popping up while I was trying to prepare my system to be updated. While I was closing apps. While Caja and Thinar were arguing about who owns my cdrom.

I try dismissing the notif and it start trying to update. I close the update, notif comes back. Let me turn stuff off first.

It felt like handling an excited child a bit. There is only now there is only the update.

Deferring by a time 4 hr, a day (serious just leave it alone until midnight) when acknowledging the notification would provide the type of environment control I’m looking for.

If there dev capacity around this…. Setting for Unattended updates between X-Y hours is a great setting. Notif should still pop to advise the user in the 24 hours leading up to this.

hank2121

vimanuelt thx Vic, would be cool. I just installed this via software-station, but hadn t the chance to try out.
But after the CUPS way, I was a bit anxious, it goes via a lot of scripts again, so hesitated at 1st 😄

brianthehughes

As part of any Settings, System Services consolidated or unified controls...

Some implementation of Services Management

Help users turn on/off sshd, linux, virtualbox (core) services, that may be off installed but off by default.
Help users managed installed services/applications such as Apache (or any httpd), databases (*SQL/etc), xrdp/vnc.

q-pa

Toggle on/off:

a monthly scrub run
automatic snapshots of /home (incl. pruning)

brianthehughes

Panel Management. :-) Shortcut keys introduction or window handling intro.

I've got a pretty good document going now, it's a little unattractive, but a good summary to throw more stuff at and discourage high effort, low return items. Of course, sometimes it's really cool.

The Features List

Introduction to GhostBSD
-1 title, 5 slides, 1 more info + register/connect

Instant Install GhostBSD
- Slideshow Install (with web software profile) (so crazy fast)
- Reboot
- Software Profile (User selected application profiling)
- Introducing GhostBSD (It welcomes you aboard, gives you a quick tour, and lets you tweak some initial settings right off the bat. (@vimanuelt)
- Reboot notification, dismiss-able (if required.) Remind at next day/next login whichever first.

System Settings
Preferences – Control Center – Panel Settings
- Where are the panel settings, Themes?
Control Center – Move into Preferences? Why do I have both?

System
- Software Profile
- Notifications: Now, Later 3 hours(and tell them to take a break), Off (28 days, remind user staying current is important, show outstanding updates, force manual dismissal (Later, Off(28 days))

Monitoring

- a monthly scrub run (@q-pa)

Backup Station

- automatic snapshots of /home (incl. Pruning) – (@q-pa)

Localization
– Languages - Danish – hunspell-* configuration (@Snubbi)

Printers
- Mate printers? (@hank2121)

Services Management
GhostBSD Services
- sshd, mate, lightdm, etc..
Application Services (how/whatever the user installs)
- httpd, sql, rdp, whatever isn’t Ghost (Exmaples)

Desktop Environment Manager (primary applications) @brianthehughes
- Downloadable VirtualBox Test Drives

hank2121

brianthehughes what a "damn" complete list of extensions, why not? ;-)
but for xfce, too, pls! :-D

Robin

Automatic snapshots of /home is a great idea. It's sort of what Timeshift does. I used an old program called systemback which I found to be even better and simpler than Timeshift. I would love to see this one ported to GhostBSD. It even makes a bootable .iso of the installed system and /home (if you choose to include it in the iso).

Including systemback and Quick-USB-Formatter would be the equivalent of adding MX-Linux's most-used and most popular tools.

brianthehughes

hank2121 Can you explain further what you mean by extensions?