MATE and Network Manager

mlcarson

The thing that ultimately disuaded me from using GhostBSD is kind of trivial. I judge a desktop primarily on the file manager behind it. One of the things that I have to have is a bulk rename capability. The best that I've encountered is under Mint/Debian and has the Caja plugin Bulky incorporated into it. Just having the Caja-rename plugin would also be acceptable. A couple of the other plugins that I like are the caja-gtkhash and caja-mediainfo. If you're going to the bother of creating integration of the MATE desktop into GhostBSD, the plugins for Caja should have a high priority. Other Linux distros have also lacked plugin compatibility so it's not just GhostBSD.

The other thing that was not well-done was the NetworkManager used within MATE. It did not have the ability to edit connections or add OpenVPN connections within the GUI. I managed to get the OpenVPN connection that I needed via the CLI but would have wanted to control it via the GUI.

I missed having the OnlyOffice or the Softmaker Office suite but that's out of your control. I'd probably have used the Office 365 cloud versions of their suite. I had Remmina, Chromium, OpenVPN, and Moonlight (HW acceleration enabled) installed and running which should have been enough for my work needs. Disk mappings and NFSClient stuff was working for my home connectivity. It could have probably be used as a backup system but LMDE works better for me even though I like the concept of FreeBSD more.

vimanuelt

Please submit feature requests to ensure your concerns are addressed; otherwise, your suggestions will likely not see any action taken on them. You can submit feature requests at ghostbsd/issuesissues/new?assignees=&labels=feature&template=feature_request.yaml

Here’s a structured classification of the problems and feature requests you mentioned.

File Manager (Caja) Issues

Bulk Rename Capability
- Problem: No bulk rename feature in Caja.
- Feature Request: Include caja-rename or Bulky as a plugin in GhostBSD.
Caja Plugin Support
- Problem: Lack of essential plugins that improve usability.
- Feature Request: Include the following Caja plugins:
  - caja-rename (Bulk renaming)
  - caja-gtkhash (File checksum verification)
  - caja-mediainfo (Detailed media file information)

Network Management Issues

NetworkManager Limitations
- Problem: GUI lacks options to edit connections or add OpenVPN connections.
- Feature Request: Improve NetworkManager integration in MATE to allow:
  - Editing existing network connections.
  - Adding OpenVPN connections via GUI.

Software Availability

Office Suite Availability (Not directly GhostBSD's issue, but noted)
- Problem: Lack of OnlyOffice or Softmaker Office.
- Workaround: Using Office 365 cloud versions instead.

Usability & Compatibility

General Software Usability
- Problem: Needed applications were mostly available (Remmina, Chromium, OpenVPN, Moonlight), but overall experience was better on LMDE.
- Feature Request: Improve overall integration and compatibility of software for a smoother experience.

brianthehughes

GhostBSD does include several Caja extensions, including Audio/Video Properties

caja-rename - https://github.com/tari01/caja-rename

Individual developer project extension for Caja, perhaps this could be ported to FreeBSD/GhostBSD, perhaps encouraging MATE project to adopt it would be the best option?

caja-gtkhash - https://gtkhash.org/, https://github.com/gtkhash

gtkhash has features which work with Caja (MATE), and Thunar (XFCE) (among other File Browsers) , but such would require gtkhash be ported to FreeBSD/GhostBSD. I did attempt to build gtkhash from the lastest release (2022) source, unfortunately without success.