Would you like GhostBSD to become more opinionated
No.
Would you like GhostBSD to become more opinionated, or remain general-purpose?
I should define the differences.
Opinionated GhostBSD
An opinionated system gives users a clear and consistent experience. It is easier for beginners. It works well out of the box. It focuses on a single desktop. It avoids complicated setup. This approach is good for Linux users who want to try BSD. It also helps developers polish one version instead of many.
Benefits
- Easy for new users
- Stable and consistent design
- Faster updates and fixes
Limitations
- Less freedom for advanced users
- Limited support for other use cases
- Some users may find it restrictive
General Purpose GhostBSD
A general purpose system gives users more control. It supports many setups. It allows deep customisation. It follows the BSD tradition of choice and simplicity. This path fits users who want to experiment. It is better for developers and professionals.
Benefits
- Maximum flexibility
- Appeals to technical users
- Supports wider range of tasks
Limitations
- Harder for beginners
- Slower setup
- Less consistent user experience
Is there a balance between the two? If an Xfce "flavor" had not been available, I would have ended up probably using NomadBSD and installing it in spite of the fact that it isn't meant to be installed to a HDD.
- Edited
We are now in balance as both the GhostBSD team and the community are contributing together.
So, in some cases, yes.
Opinionated:
The GhostBSD developers are responsible for supporting MATE-related issues.
General Purpose:
The GhostBSD community is responsible for supporting XFCE-related issues.
In other cases, no.
Opinionated:
GhostBSD developers should continue to expand the range of built-in tools. A wider set of defaults and system utilities makes GhostBSD easier to use and more welcoming.
General Purpose:
Users should not rely only on official tools. If something is missing, create it. That is what I have done by developing my own utilities, like brightness control and CLI-based desktop login manager, to address gaps in the system.
Yes. ;-)
It should offer both. A general purpose layer should exist. An opinionated (thoroughly resourced and fully fledged application suite) should be available.
I feel that the two are, in fact, mutally inclusive. Attempts to nurture an Opinionated system without a rugged General purpose system in place sounds like a fool's errand.
vimanuelt An opinionated system … is easier for beginners. …
General purpose GhostBSD is already easy for beginners. With added emphasis:
Simple
GhostBSD offers a user-friendly, desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD. It features the MATE desktop environment, and a selection of essential software preinstalled, simplifying your computing experience from the start.
Elegant
… comfortable …
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grahamperrin
Yes, it is friendly, but there is still room to make it more intuitive; if users feel that is needed. :-)
At the same time, some people may be perfectly happy with how things are and prefer not to see any changes, which is also completely understandable. What is the community's risk appetite for change and their expectations? I do not know, but let us find out. :-)
"Risk appetite?"
For testers who agree to such risk, sure. Might even be fun for them. For me, though, "as is" (rock-stable, simple, dependable) is what I prefer.
a month later
- Edited
This is a great question and I would like favour a more opinionated set-up in which suggestions for customization are given to users when setting up.
This is related to the idea that was under discussion of giving users a choice of browser to install. The suggestions that are made, including the default recommendation and the order they are listed, are inherently opinionated. Yet it still gives users freedom to go their own way.
Similarly users might get asked to tick off a checklist of ways they expert to use their new OS. That might include tick boxes for "media consumption", "office software", "email and chat", "image editing", "video editing", "audio editing", "scientific computing" etc. Then for each use case that was selected, you can then have further menus offering recommended software to install for each one. (Web browsing can probably be taken as a given so no need to offer a tick box for that before offering a browser selection menu. Maybe media consumption too. But the other things I listed would probably be of interest to smaller subsets of people, hence the suggestion to select a tick box first before overwhelming users with the choice of software they have no interest in.)
This way someone who wants to use GhostBSD for a quite specific personal purpose has a workable system up and running very quickly, but you don't have to e.g. force an office suite on everybody.
That would make the ISO much smaller as well. Anyone with a decent Internet connection could add the apps they prefer. Like a "GhostBSD-Mini" ISO to install the basic system and sufficient GUI tools to customize the install.
- Edited
I'm not sure exactly how much difference it would make to the ISO since there's not that much stuff preinstalled, but that's certainly another advantage. Currently the ISO size limits how much software can be bundled, and what you get by default is pretty minimal. It's not "granny friendly" in the sense that getting a system set up to handle your day to day tasks (which may differ a lot between users) is going to involve installing extra software, a step which is pretty intimidating without anyone guiding you through it.
Extra thought: it would be nice if you could run the "Recommended Software Centre" again, some time after your installation, if you wanted to try out some other options you turned down the first time!
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BigSneakyDuck
In migrating from MATE to Gershwin desktop environment (GNUstep-based), we may be able to reduce the ISO footprint by nearly 0.5 GiB. Given the current minimum RAM requirement of 8 GiB, this reduction could provide enough flexibility to reconsider including an additional application.
In a recent test build that bundled applications like LibreOffice, Inkscape, and other commonly requested tools, the RAM requirement rose to 12 GiB. I do not believe we want to place that burden on users by requiring 12 GiB just to run the system effectively.
Providing a post-install utility to install popular applications quickly seems like the more practical approach. Then again, we already have Software Station, which could serve this purpose well.
With the recent interest in the Gershwin, we appear to be moving toward a more opinionated and cohesive desktop experience. It seems likely that MATE and XFCE will be phased out within the next few years.
This shift is driven in part by the trajectory of GTK development as Gtk3 is effectively a legacy toolkit, and Gtk5 will not support X11. As a result, continuing with X11-compatible desktop environments built on GTK becomes increasingly untenable.
An interesting reply, thanks. I would argue that in its current form the Software Station is insufficiently opinionated for the purpose of getting users started, especially for those who are less technical. The vast majority of users do not want, and likely will not even understand the purpose of, the majority of software on offer from it.
Perhaps what I was suggesting would work better as a substantial new feature added to the Software Station, or perhaps it is better to allow Software Station to focus on its current purpose and have a separate "station" to produce somewhat personalised software recommendations. It would be nice to be presented with a way to tick my needs, and if I select eg office productivity and image editing, get give the option to install some appropriate suggested software, rather than me having to search out software from an immense and uncurated list.
Opinionated curation can be extremely valuable - you don't have to make the final choice for the user, but you can present sensible options to choose between.
BigSneakyDuck
Yes, you are right. Until recently, I had been working on extending Software Station to support exactly what you were suggesting. However, with the migration to Gershwin now underway, Software Station will likely be refactored and rewritten in Objective-C. It will take me some time to become fully familiar with the new ecosystem before I can begin implementing that functionality.
Development is underway on a proof-of-concept GhostBSD App Store that combines key features of both Software Station and Update Station. It is being written in Objective-C for the GhostBSD Gershwin desktop environment and features a streamlined user interface.
The application includes dedicated views for Featured software, Categories (software listings), and Updates. Selecting an item from the sidebar dynamically updates the lower portion of the window to display the corresponding content.
Notably, the App Store takes an automatic system snapshot before applying any software updates, providing a safeguard for rollbacks. The integrated search functionality is also working well, offering responsive and accurate results.
In reflecting on my FreeBSD journey, what I wished we'd had at the start is a distribution that non-linux users could cope with. I left MS and the learning curve was steep....
I think a FreeBSD distro that doesn’t require use of a terminal emulator to maintain utility, currency, privacy and security is a great desire. But alas impossible. Most packages require some 'adjustments' in a terminal emulator.
Third party applications (i.e. not in a repository) we tend to need are not usually maintained by providers for FreeBSD (Linux yes).
I like ProtonVPN but I need to write a edit a script to use it.
There's conf files to negotiate for packages like clamAV, smartmontools, etc.
If I wish to use a USB to install Ghost I need to issue sha256 and DD commands in a terminal emulator.
There's usually sysctl and rc conf files that need adjusting with a new packages too.
While some useful utilities still exist (bsdconfig) again they're in a TE.
In making a GhostBSD experience user friendly we need to admit that the lack of graphical interfaces for mundane and repetitive tasks are often absent, putting the onus on new users to navigate their way through CLIs.
I think, as we will always need to tinker in a TE, navigating directory structures to get the behaviours we're looking for, keeping the distro simple (KISS) is a good starting place.
For Windows users, the bootable USB can be created using Rufus rather than the command line, and indeed that's how the official instructions recommend to do it:
https://www.ghostbsd.org/download
However, a non-technical Windows user is likely to have some struggles once they have installed GhostBSD! Thinking about people I know personally or colleagues I worked with other than those employed in technical roles, I suspect the vast majority of Windows users have never used the command line. (Indeed, that's what the famous "tech support" telephone scams are relying on.)
This may be even more acute with people whose experience with tech growing up is centred around iPads and smartphones rather than the traditional desktop paradigm. As one example, lots of college professors complain they have to teach incoming students how to save their work as files within a directory structure because even that has become something of an alien concept. So while more technical users think of ls and cd as the very basics of the command line, even this relies on underlying knowledge of file system hierarchies that you can't assume all users possess!
Obviously I think it would be great if more people were empowered to take control over their own tech by developing their understanding of how stuff works and ways they can tinker with it. But not all users are either able or willing to take this route. On the other hand, I don't think any "user-friendly BSD" is likely to reach the same ease of use for the non-technical masses as has been achieved by mainstream smartphones and tablets. Partly because that relies on locking stuff down, which isn't the BSD way.
It's perhaps worth considering what "user-friendly" really means for a given project. One option is to think about user stories. Realistically, is the aim to make it "granny friendly"? Or is it pitched at someone more like a college student or working professional, who is assumed to have a certain literacy and curiosity about tech and who needs to use software suites on their system to perform productive work, albeit someone who is not a tech specialist and is not assumed to be able to code or be fluent on the command line?
Another way of thinking about it is to consider who are this product's competitors? If the aim of GhostBSD is to produce a system that a "typical" Windows, Mac or Ubuntu user can use comfortably after a period of familiarisation, then realistically it's not quite there yet. And getting there probably does involve being "more opinionated". If the aim is to be "more usable out of the box than other BSDs while retaining the flexibility and power of FreeBSD" then GhostBSD is doing very well, and becoming more opinionated might endanger some of the other goals.
a month later
- Edited
Speaking as a newbie, I must say that the Software Station is a bit overwhelming when trying to find useful software for my own interests and needs. It would help a lot if there was a user comments/ratings function built-in (like user reviews on amazon.com?) so that selecting the most well rated software would become somewhat easier for each user's particular needs.
As for whether GhostBSD should become more opinionated or remain general-purpose, a curated system "which just works" (but with impeccable privacy and security functionality, and with the possibility of installing a huge number of high performance open source software), will certainly get my vote because I am a newbie, and the learning curve of a FreeBSD system is non-trivial.
Incidentally, I had not heard of either elementary OS or Nitrux, but the Ubuntu-based Feren OS is the OS that I use when I am not using GhostBSD. I chose Feren OS because it came with the multi-platform Vivaldi Browser, and had a friendly user community which eased the learning curve for me.
I mention this here because I think that for me, GhostBSD is to FreeBSD what Feren OS is to Linux. Relatively user friendly and desktop oriented path to open source computing...