Planning to switch to GhostBSD

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kraileth
Posts: 312
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2016 12:30 pm

Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by kraileth »

Hi everybody! I'm new to GhostBSD. After about a decade of using Linux for the desktop I've switched most of my machines over to FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I custom built my systems and generally prefer either an extremely light-weight desktop (the FLTK based EDE) or MATE for a full-blown DE. I've tested PC-BSD and GhostBSD in the past and kind of liked both but thought that it would be better to keep building stuff myself for the simple reason of learning the most that way.

Now that I feel reasonably confortable with FreeBSD, my interest in FreeBSD's desktop variants has recently revived. I love a lot of things that PC-BSD/TrueOS does (boot environments, SysAdm, ...) but I also like to keep older machines alive. So there are three reasons why I kind of favor GhostBSD over the other product; it:
  • still supports i386 and UFS (for machines with little RAM)
  • uses GTK (yay!) instead of the ugly bloat that is Qt
  • is a small independent project (and I have a soft spot for "underdogs")
Yesterday I've installed it on real hardware for the first time. So far I'm very happy with it. It comes with a decent amount of applications preinstalled and it looks just very nice.

I'll try to support the project a bit and see if I fit into the community. My Python knowledge is rather limited and so development is probably not the right field for me. So far I've begun re-writing some wiki pages hoping to improve the documentation. I've already run into a few things where I'm not quite sure that they are correct; I'll try to figure it out myself first - but whom could I ask for a definitive answer if eventually I'm not sure? Should I ask here on the forums? I've also tried to translate the "Main Page" into German but for some reason this seems not to work. Will have to look into that further.

So: Thanks for this very nice desktop variant of FreeBSD and for all the hard work that was put into 10.3! I really appreciate it.
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by ASX »

kraileth wrote:Hi everybody! I'm new to GhostBSD. After about a decade of using Linux for the desktop I've switched most of my machines over to FreeBSD and OpenBSD. I custom built my systems and generally prefer either an extremely light-weight desktop (the FLTK based EDE) or MATE for a full-blown DE. I've tested PC-BSD and GhostBSD in the past and kind of liked both but thought that it would be better to keep building stuff myself for the simple reason of learning the most that way.

Now that I feel reasonably confortable with FreeBSD, my interest in FreeBSD's desktop variants has recently revived. I love a lot of things that PC-BSD/TrueOS does (boot environments, SysAdm, ...) but I also like to keep older machines alive. So there are three reasons why I kind of favor GhostBSD over the other product; it:
  • still supports i386 and UFS (for machines with little RAM)
  • uses GTK (yay!) instead of the ugly bloat that is Qt
  • is a small independent project (and I have a soft spot for "underdogs")
Yesterday I've installed it on real hardware for the first time. So far I'm very happy with it. It comes with a decent amount of applications preinstalled and it looks just very nice.

I'll try to support the project a bit and see if I fit into the community. My Python knowledge is rather limited and so development is probably not the right field for me. So far I've begun re-writing some wiki pages hoping to improve the documentation. I've already run into a few things where I'm not quite sure that they are correct; I'll try to figure it out myself first - but whom could I ask for a definitive answer if eventually I'm not sure? Should I ask here on the forums? I've also tried to translate the "Main Page" into German but for some reason this seems not to work. Will have to look into that further.

So: Thanks for this very nice desktop variant of FreeBSD and for all the hard work that was put into 10.3! I really appreciate it.
Hi and welcome!
Thank you for your feedback, very much appreciated.

As for suppordting the project, you will be more than welcome!
There are lot of areas that can be improved, from wiki, to forum support, to testing and reporting an more.
Please join us on irc.freenode.net #ghostbsd or #ghostbsd-dev or ping back here. ;)
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ericbsd
Developer
Posts: 2052
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:54 pm

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by ericbsd »

kraileth thanks this is great to have this kind of feedback. Like you ASX said youare welcome on irc.freenode.net #ghostbsd and #ghostbsd-dev.
edg
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2016 7:33 pm

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by edg »

Thought I'd add to this thread as I am also considering a switch to GhostBSD. I have been a happy PC-BSD user for the last couple of years, but PC-BSD has morphed into TrueOS, which uses the FreeBSD 12. CURRENT rather than the 10.3 or 11.0 production releases. I have been running PC-BSD inside VirtualBox; I use it as a development environment for a number of FreeBSD servers, which run on the stable branch. I would like my development environment to match the server environment as closely as possible, with the exception of the addition of a GUI front-end. TrueOS doesn't meet that need.

I have downloaded and played with both Mate and Xfce versions of GhostBSD (I have a slight preference for the Xfce look and feel). I am close to making the switch, but I have one frustration that I haven't been able to solve so far:

The xterm console window title of my PC-BSD instance displays the name of the remote server when I use SSH. This is must-have feature for me, as I often have several ssh sessions going at the same time. PC-BSD supports this through the KDE Konsole app, which recognizes the "%h" variable that holds the remote host name. Xfce doesn't support that token. I have been looking into shell configuration options to see if I can get the the terminal title to pick up the remote host name from the shell, but I haven't found a solution yet. I didn't find a remote host reference in the fish shell documentation (I may have missed it... I am new to fish). The C shell supports a remote host token, but it looks like the system isn't populating the value.

Can someone point me in the right direction on this? Is there any chance that this could be added to a future version of GhostBSD?

Thx
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by ASX »

edg wrote: Can someone point me in the right direction on this? Is there any chance that this could be added to a future version of GhostBSD?
http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Xterm-Title.html#s3
edg
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Oct 15, 2016 7:33 pm

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by edg »

Thanks so much for the quick reply. Setting the value from the shell configuration script was in fact the route that I was going, but I didn't find a solution that captured the remote host.
In the end, my solution was to simply install the KDE konsole package. I had assumed that it needed a full-blown KDE installation, but it installs just fine on its own and solves my problem.
Now I am going back and forth between GhostBSD with Xfce and a FreeBSD 11 environment with KDE that I set up today, to see which environment I like best.

Thx again.

Ed
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macondo
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:04 pm
Location: PANAMA

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by macondo »

Hi, I like your philosophy, especially the GRUB use to have Linux and BSD's in the same hard drive.

Sadly, I cannot download the ISO from the servers, (0 peers), I tried with deluge and transmission, and there is no FTP regular download either, and the size of the dvd is 1.8 GB, there should another CD for people who just want the base and later on install window managers like IceWM, JWM, Openbox, withouth dragging desktop environments.

Congratulations, you got the right idea!
Desktop Celeron with 4 gigs RAM - icewm/jwm/ratpoison - FreeBSD 11.1/GhostBSD 11.1
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid
ASX
Posts: 988
Joined: Wed May 06, 2015 12:46 pm

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by ASX »

FTP downloading should just work:
http://www.ghostbsd.org/download

scroll down and click on the DVD icons.

As for a a minimal ISO, usually I build one for (personal) testing, but it is nowhere near something that can be widely distributed (and supported). But we will think again about that later, after setting up our repository, because things should be simpler after that task is complete.
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macondo
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:04 pm
Location: PANAMA

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by macondo »

Thanks, pal. I'll go and try to find the ftp server.
Desktop Celeron with 4 gigs RAM - icewm/jwm/ratpoison - FreeBSD 11.1/GhostBSD 11.1
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid
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macondo
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:04 pm
Location: PANAMA

Re: Planning to switch to GhostBSD

Post by macondo »

I was clicking on the torrent link and not on the DVD icons, sometimes I'm a little dense.
Thanks again.
Desktop Celeron with 4 gigs RAM - icewm/jwm/ratpoison - FreeBSD 11.1/GhostBSD 11.1
KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid
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