My blog post about GhostBSD future.

ericbsd

I had a couple of requests, and I decided to make it a blog post here: https://ericbsd.com/addressing-xlibre-change-and-ghostbsd-future.html

alexintokyo

ericbsd Thanks for the blog post explaining the situation around xlibre, xorg, wayland and so on. I had not really been aware of all these storms raging under the surface of GhostBSD, FreeBSD, and Linux until I read the post and did a few internet searches to find out more. Now I have a better understanding of the challenges ahead for GhostBSD.
I also appreciated your making clear that the future of GhostBSD is by no means assured. That is good for users to bear in mind. I thank you for all your efforts to make and maintain GhostBSD. I recently attempted an install of FreeBSD 15.0 just to see whether I could get anywhere with it but found that although I could get some CUI apps to run on it, I could not even get a Japanese input method installed, let alone a GUI. I might give it another try after learning more about FreeBSD but I am so glad that GhostBSD was here to jump start my entry into BSD.

RodMyers

I am glad you you founded GhostBSD.

Gershwin, in the long term, is looks like the most viable solution

Just my $0.02

tsesani

I am definitely for XLibre to keep X alive.
Gershwin is OK, it if breaks the GTK strong hold.
I personally use Icewm.
I love Window Maker too.
Anything that avoids systemd, wayland and Red Hat's influence.
I do not want to see GhostBSD go away.

tsesani

tsesani https://www.enlightenment.org/ may also be a good choice.
I have looked at GNUstep over the years but I never took the time to learn Objective-C.
In the long run, it is probably the safe choice.
Sorry, you do not have enough help.

tsesani

tsesani I will try the latest gershwin-on-freebsd-20260214125850-x86_64.iso on one of my computers this week also.

tsesani

tsesani I am for Gershwin. I did the latest ISO above but did not install. They need a little more time.
But all in all, looks nice. I did do a clean install of GhostBSD 25.02-R14.3p2 - Gershwin Community Preview.
I was pleased but on update it failed to start anymore. I have been a Unix person since 1995 and not seeing my files in /home/user bothered me a bit. I am also not used to the Apple like interface but I can live with that.

hank2121

well, with all the stability and freedom of choice with GhostBSD, I m not that big fan of a Apple-/MacOS-like desktop. I dprefer, either to stay with Xfce, or, as an alternative, something with a menue structure like with Xfce, Cinnamon or Mate. I also experimented with Enlightenment, when trying Bodhi linux once and was pleasantly surprised, both look and performance.
So if a modern desktop could be combined with a menue structure as known of older Windows or Xfce/Cinnamon versions, that would be my favourite.
Anyway, the efforts and lots of work, Eric had/has put into GhostBSD can t be appreciated and blessed enough. To my shame, my skills in programming are neglectable, so some financial support, spreading the word and helping in forums will have to do. But for now, I wont see any reason to go away from GhostBSD, so hopefully, many others think likewise. And with Xlibre and a good desktop variant, that excellent system will hopefully survive!! I had a round of askings in my company Nesevo with those blessed with programming skills, but they are all hooked on Linux unfortunately. At least one of my bosses got hooked on TrueNAS systems as well and started to dig much deeper into this and trying to become a reseller for it!

chetWS

Another desktop to consider is SonicDE. They're KDE based, but they're committed to keeping X11 support. I agree with hank2121 in that I much prefer the Windows-like interface over the Mac-like. However, I definitely see the need for a BSD-centric window manager. So I guess I'll get used to Gershwin if and when it becomes Ghost's standard desktop.

I really hope that you get more coders to help. Perhaps you'll get more former Linux devs in the coming years given how hostile many Linux distros and projects have become to those who don't think exactly as they do.

ericbsd

chetWS Gershwin has the MACOS look right now, but with time, it will be customisable. When I have time away from everything else, I would like to create a menu similar to the Brisk menu I use on my GhostBSD system.

alexintokyo

ericbsd The Brisk menu looks really clean and smartly designed. When I look at the Gershwin design as it is now, the wannabe MacOS look with the Mac OS Classic logo lookalike button makes it look a bit too casual maybe. For GhostBSD, a clean and smart look like the Brisk menu look would be a good fit!

hank2121

ericbsd yeah, that looks pretty cool, would be ok for me, too!

Charade

I think to be successfull I would not make Gershwin too much customizable.

GhostBSD should choose a clear direction and follow that path. Many people - who me also belong to - want a System, that just works. And there is NO Desktop, that fits everyones imagination. The big failure of Linux on Desktop is the number of distributions and their diverge ways. Snap, Flatpak, AppImage, apt, rpm, pacman and I dont know how many Desktops.

GhostBSD could be a winner if it has its only and own Desktop. People May want to give an OS a Face. What is the Face of Linux? Too many faces! Let give GhostBSD (and FreeBSD) a Face. People can choose. I like / I dont like it.

And many people like macOS. Of course you cannot satisfy everyone, But that is No need. Other things May be less complicated if *BSD has just its one only desktop. Software could be easier ported, no need to run on several desktops/libraries. And you may have a consistent Desktop Design and experience.

ericbsd

Charade GhostBSD could be a winner if it has its only and own Desktop.

Yeah, you are right about it. That is how I wanted that to be at first. The only thing is that it is hard get the right focus on that when time is limited.

ericbsd

I have read back my blog with a clear mind, and I made 2 edits to the text to clarify my thoughts and added a disclaimer. I need to make sure my thoughts are well-written. With my dyslexia, words get easily omitted. I guess having Claude review the incomplete thought would be a good idea. https://ericbsd.com/addressing-xlibre-change-and-ghostbsd-future.html

hank2121

ericbsd hmmm, everyone s on Claude now. Is this "guy" really that good? ;-) my boss also swears on M. Claude for his texts... i m for now still with gemini...

chetWS

I agree that no desktop environment (DE) can account for everyone's ideal of what a DE should be. However, if you think about it, how many major DE user interface (UI) paradigms are really popular out there? Some like the way MacOS interacts with the user. Some like the way Windows interacts with the user. There might be some dinosaurs out there like me that liked the way the old X Windows system did things (think Solaris and Silicon Graphics from the '90s), but I don't think there's too many of us around.

How the DE interacts with the user directly affects the users workflow. Having a flexible DE that allows a reasonable measure of customization is a good thing especially if you want to standardize on one desktop. I don't think that having flexibility in this area is a bad because we all "grew up" learning different UIs and their conventions. It appears to me that if you like MacOS style, Gershwin is already to deliver. If you like Windows style, there are some customization you can do to Gershwin that Eric has mentioned that will mostly deliver that without making Gershwin as complicated to customize as say, the Trinity DE.

Now when it comes to OS level stuff, I agree with Charade. Take application installation on Linux as a great example. You have various package managers (.deb, .rpm, .pkg.tar.zst, etc) all of which are incompatible with each other. You also have systems like Flatpak, AppImage, and snap which are all incompatible with each other as well. I really don't believe that kind of system fragmentation is helpful at all. One of the things that I find appealing about BSD is it basically has pkg's and ports. And all of these more or less work across the different flavors of BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and netBSD).

vimanuelt

chetWS

I think we need one clear and consistent model, similar to how UTF 8 standardized text encoding. A shared approach improves reliability and long term maintainability.

If we want to evolve package management, it may also be worth reconsidering installation itself. Today, packages distribute files across many system directories. Over time, this can make systems harder to reason about and harder to return to a clean state.

An alternative is to treat each application as a self contained unit. The system does not get modified internally. It simply references or mounts the application. Removal then becomes as simple as deleting that one unit, leaving the base system unchanged.

ZFS could strengthen this model. Each application could live in its own dataset, with snapshots and rollback for safe testing and clean removal.

I already have a working prototype and use it daily. I also understand that the current focus is on pkg and pkgbase. It likely makes sense to revisit this idea once pkgbase stabilizes and there is more space to evaluate complementary approaches.

Timing matters as much as technical merit.

LizziAS

I am not someone with coding skills. It's unfortunate but i have tried it a couple times in life and as i close in on 59 spins, i have never even learned to type. Linux is falling off the rocker of what it used to be about and is being co-opted by corporate interests. Systemd is a travesty and wayland and rust are just not mature enough to do the job they are designed for. One day maybe... but if they rely on systemd - ewww! So here i am scoping out freebsd and of course ghostbsd. Anyone remember pc-bsd? ghost seems like the successor to it. I'd still be using that if it were around. I was checking out nomad but it looks like it's no longer being developed and it contains a r/o fs that can't be updated so it has it limits as an installed/upgradable system. You have something very precious here but yes, one person can't do it all. I have lots of gratuitude for you making this distro but that won't pay your bills or write code. I do hope ever so very much that you are successful and that Elohim opens doors for this work to go forward with what time we all have left.