GhostBSD in the Fediverse

Robin

I see that GhostBSD has some representation on Mastodon, but I wonder if it shouldn't have some representation on some of the other platforms like Friendica, Hubzilla, or my favorite, Diaspora. Other than me bragging about GhostBSD's awesomeness there and in a couple of threads about systemd, it'd be cool if our favorite OS had an official presence on any of the macro-blogging platforms. I would be delighted to create and manage such an account, if only to repost entries from the project blog and such.

brianthehughes

Robin
I’ve been considering journaling around my interests and efforts vis-à-vis GhostBSD.

Most recently this has taken a TogglTrack perspective of GhostBSD-User, Conference, and my Basic Boxes project.

Though, I’m starting to see Forums turn up in my -User tracking with some frequency.

Personally I question the value more editorial or experiential content. Like a guide or a write up makes sense, but where’s the value add or experience add for a reader?

Does a blogging look at GhostBSD push the focus away from Ghost and onto the individual users use cases and experiences?

Those are my questions around the idea you propose. I think the idea is good, just that scoping the effort is generally important to success, regardless of the activity.

This feels like a weekly/monthly community poll or question to be explored.

Sharing the effort and/or intentionally having a conversation with another Ghost (like yourself) on a platform would certainly make a more appealing bit of content - in my opinion.

Really interested to hear your thoughts.

Robin

All I've been doing so far, as a non-technical type of just ordinary desktop 'puter user, is blogging about how easy GhostBSD is to install, configure to my liking, to maintain, and use. That it's more nimble and responsive than any Linux distro I've tried, that it's "non-political" (believe it or not, there are Linux OSes out there that are very, rabidly exclusive about politics - kicking off developers from the project and users from their forums who don't share their political views), etc. I do it under the hashtag #GhostBSD on diaspora and on my blog. My posts have generated some interest in Ghost because, as I put it, "GhostBSD is to FreeBSD as Ubuntu was to Debian: Simplified for 'the rest of us' to use at home." That is a stated goal of the project, and all I'm doing is letting people know that it's been successful in my own case.

Also, since even the Linux kernel has become politicized according to many, people of conscience are looking for ways to avoid the politics altogether. They care about the code, not the political ideals of the coders.

What's more, most people prefer to run applications, not the operating system. GhostBSD is so trouble-free for me, I just get my school work done without thinking about what software to use or whether it will work or not.

brianthehughes

I think you might be on the edge of understanding the minimal GhostBSD presence in social spaces where "me too", cancel culture, inflammatory counterpoint, click-bait, noise storms are more important than substance. Where opinion is offered up as value without experience or context to support perspective.

We are in such a strange time, strange days. But every generation says that, experiences that. Didn't they say aliens are real - and everyone decided to complain about Taylor Swift's carbon foot print instead of asking why humanity is crawling along to the economic whims of the few?

🙂

I'm jumping all over to maybe make my point. And I am very much expressing my own feelings here - not anything to do with GhostBSD or GhostBSD Community, though I wholeheartedly put energies into both - and I don't code. Well I could, I can - I guess, but projects don't survive on code alone - if they do, it's at a crawl and in obscurity. Projects grow and thrive with community; and therein lies the rub. How does one nurture a community when the world is so torn at tearing apart those that would come together - for ANY cause?! (Who doesn't love a good interrobang?!)

😦

It is NOT safe out there.

I feel that perhaps GhostBSD's leadership demonstrates:

“Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise”

But I have no communication that says so... just my observation.

I'm probably going too deep and all around what you are thinking. Maybe missing your point you'd say? It seems to me, that you outlined the general role of a community publicist. And perhaps you're right. I adore the fact that you volunteered to take up the effort of in your presentation of the idea. In fact, the more noise we make (GhostBSDCon-2025) (FreeBSD Laptop Working Group 2025) the more such a role will become necessary.

I believe (again - unfounded - simply speculating here) that GhostBSD leadership recognizes the horizon ahead of them and is considering what's next - how much noise to make - what noises to make.

Your proposal to manage additional social channels with the basic ongoing project updates is probably the best idea (other than coding support) of 2025!! 😉

Hopefully @ericbsd takes some time to consider formalizing and delegating some of the communications duties. Are you up to the task of having your opinions quieted (reserved for your personal channels) in order to support the needs of the project?

Big ideas and questions - that neither of us are in a position to decide - only to explore and offer support of.

This rambling editorial brought to you by red licorice after work.

Robin

I am absolutely willing to be another voice for the project on the macro side of the Fediverse. I would do that not as "Robin" with his own opinions, but as a voice for our little community on those platforms.

I will save "Robin's Rants and Raves" for the blog and for my own diaspora presence, but I would create a whole 'nother account for GhostBSD Community if I had the honor of being tasked with that privlidge.

brianthehughes

I read a bunch of your blog yesterday. Bedtime stories. 🙂 Somewhat impressive ongoing adventures with GhostBSD.

I am curious how you might address a public perception that individual participants and contributors to GhostBSD are associatively representative of the culture of GhostBSD.

In my perception, I reiterate that the resulting product of contributors and community participants is the culture of GhostBSD.

The outcomes are of importance, and the project emphasizes respectful contribution above social noise.

Robin

Honestly, I don't know enough about "the culture of GhostBSD." I only know that other projects have tried to make the BSDs "novice friendly" in the past with varying degrees of sucess or failure. I looked at NomadBSD first, actually, but set it aside because

It's not intended for installation on a computer, but to be a portable OS
What portable OS doesn't come with any kind of word processor at all?

Seems to me if you make a portable thumbdrive OS, I should be able to use it on a school computer to work on my term papers, but it doesn't even have Abiword, much less LibreOffice or something. So I guess it's just for browsing the web or something, more like a "kiosk" kind of thing.

Similar "make BSD friendly for mere mortals" projects seem to have fallen by the wayside, but GhostBSD is going strong and it has been going strong for long enough to achieve it's level of awesomeness.

How would you describe "the culture of GhostBSD" anyway?

brianthehughes

Robin

I tried a nomadbsd boot on one of my basicbox $7 computers this morning. It actually worked out really well until I tried to use their package manager to update everything at once on a usb installed system. I let it go for hours. The backup stages have no progress indication and I assume its backup is proportional to the number of packages changing. I didn’t kill the update or anything but I did choose to executes the hard driver installer … settler.

It copied the current system to the hard drive. It set up both legacy and uefi boot options. When I rebooted I added my normal desktop user account.

Logged out and back in as my self. Ran pkg update after moving the repository to FreeBSD latest from quarterly. Opened up octopkg and watched it rip through just shy of 1000 packages.

Rebooted. Ran ooctopkg again and it updated pkg .. again .. weird. Okay. Back to shell to pkg install of LibreOffice, xfce4-taskmanager. screen. Tried out hexachat. Messed with panel and plank settings for far too long. Set some custom wall papers different across a couple desktops.

Actually really happy with installed nomadbsd. Considering what to make it do. Maybe plex server. Was going to see how it fails when I put XRDP on it first maybe.

About the word processor situation… geany was right there. Copy paste save. I was shocked to find that the usb drive had a higher mb/sec than the system hard drive according to dmesg when I checked the system ram. That said… it asks which editor to set; ee, vim, vi when setting up the user. Those can all take text. I think Windows maybe trained me to look for Notepad and Word. I’m saying there are so many options for text.

As to culture, I hope that

‘The outcomes are of importance and that the project emphasizes respectful contribution above social noise.‘

ericbsd

As the project leader and founder, I can't define the actual culture.

On my side, GhostBSD is not a place for politics and social issues. I have no time to deal with these kinds of issues. I have dealt with that so much lately that is why I have this line below GhostBSD Community Guidelines:

Avoid unrelated topics, including politics or social issues, to maintain focus on the community’s purpose.

I removed the lobby on Telegram because it was part of the issue. That said, I would like people not to use the lobby to discuss politics or social issues related to other projects.

For GhostBSD social media, I do not have a problem with someone creating a GhostBSD Community account. My only requirement is that it only focus on GhostBSD and nothing more. I have tried to keep the GhostBSD Community focused on contributing and helping others, and I don't want to see posts that could jeopardize that.

For a personal blog, that is another story people are free to write on what they want.