Bringing New Users to GhostBSD!

Robin

Hopefully they'll show up here in the Forums soon. But as word gets around about how twisted Linux is becoming, I've been sending folks to our web site to check out GhostBSD! Example: Debian bans a bunch of it's own developers because of politics(??), then turns around and asks for help, and people are like, "what does politics have to do with making a good OS and good software?" I direct their attention to GhostBSD and point out:

That the BSDs are not corrupted by Big Money from Big Tech
That GhostBSD is beginner-friendly
That our Forums are awesome, and
That GhostBSD outperforms Linux for me.

Word is getting around! And 'nixers are looking to free themselves of "capitalist corporations taking over FOSS," as one diaspora member put it. Whenever I hear that, I jump on it and offer GhostBSD as a superb alternative.

Off-topic: Today is my first day of chemo, so if I'm not around as much for a little while it won't be because I'm not still a rabid

vimanuelt

Robin
Thank you, Robin. I've also been doing a bit of advocacy earlier this month. 🙂

Joe and Damian have been making great progress on the Gershwin desktop, which aims to offer GhostBSD users a fresh alternative to MATE and Xfce. With their support alongside Eric’s ongoing work, the future of GhostBSD is looking exceptionally promising. 🙂

pugwall

Contemplating it.

I'm posting from OpenMandriva - as a lot of your potential new users likely will be.

FreeBSD grind my gears at times though too, and they're your upstream. Same sort of stuff has infiltrated there - i.e. changing the terms master/slave. I'd certainly appreciate not having the Big Money/Big Tech influence though at least.

Is it enough to go through inferior hardware support and workarounds for the software I want to use (i.e. Brave, or just not Firefox)? I don't know yet.

Robin

pugwall Hi, and welcome!

Hardware has always been a bit of an issue with the BSDs because there's no Big Tech Money behind it, no bribes paid, a lot less of the corruption that is running rampant in Linuxland. That's why I'm here. Another reason I chose GhostBSD over the very wonderful OpenMandriva - besides the differences between Linux and FreeBSD - has been to further avoid the scandalous Big Money pollution of almost every Linux distro that depends on systemd. I won't entertain a new argument on the pros and cons of that evil, cancerous, all-consuming, powerhungry, one-ring-to-rule-them-all software, but suffice it to say it contributed to my decision to choose GhostBSD for ethical reasons.

By the way, I use the Brave browser in my GhostBSD (Xfce) system trouble-free. It's in our repositories.

pugwall

Robin

Thanks!

I'll make the jump on my living room/TV PC at least, where I literally only need a web browser for streaming and some lazy sofa browsing. It's a Dell Optiplex 7060 micro. Getting my USB Bluetooth and WiFi dongles to work would be nice, but it's TV speaker and Ethernet most of the time anyway, so no big deal.

So no quirks with Brave? Even on OpenMandriva it crashes & closes constantly which is becoming frustrating on the TV box.

All the best with your chemo treatment too.

jwjones

I have just recently left Linux for BSD. I do still have a Slackware installation in VM, however. Slackware is by far one of the least egregious Linux distros. Most recently I had Artix on my ThinkPad T61 laptop, and I did actually like it quite a bit. But the general fragmented nature of Linux, and the slow move to push out anything that isn't tied to systemd and Wayland has led me here, as well as some excellent articles on the unixdigest website.

I have tried GhostBSD in the past, and also ran OpenBSD for a while, which I liked very much. But I've found that FreeBSD seems better suited for a good desktop experience. I did try to install FreeBSD 14.3 in VM and build a desktop system from there, based on excellent tutorials from vermaden, but ultimately I lost patience (for now), and decided to give GhostBSD another try. I am impressed! I now have a very nice XFCE desktop on my T61. I also discovered that I still had an active account on the FreeBSD forums, and decided it would be a good idea to open one here. I look forward to learning more about GhostBSD and FreeBSD.

Robin

pugwall Brave does suddenly crash sometimes, but not often. But so does ungoogled-chromium and Iridium (also in our repositories), so I reckon it's a chromium-based issue. I'm also pretty sure that whatever the problem is, it'll be resolved with a future update. It probably has more to do with the whole GTK thing than with the browsers. We have lots of browsers to choose from, including Midori, and old favorite I haven't tried in years but might check out soon.

Off topic
Chemo hasn't been as bad as everyone says yet. I feel okay, just tired, which is weird for me. But not sick, not in much pain. Eighteen more days of it (with breaks on weekends), hopefully, won't leave me all sickly and miserable. So far so good, thanks!