Do you use FreeBSD or OpenSolaris as a desktop OS? [closed]

Question

Share you success stories of using FreeBSD or OpenSolaris as an alternative to the Linux desktop. What advantages do you think there is of choosing either over Linux?

Answer 1

I use FreeBSD 7.2 as my OS on my home laptop. It started as an experiment, then I fell in love with it. I feel that where FreeBSD really shines is the ports library, the project maintains a huge amount of ports that all have their dependencies worked out so you can easily install and the dependencies will be dragged down and installed at the same time. This means that it is also trivial to keep your system up to date. I use portupgrade which will upgrade your ports seamlessly (most of the time). I have also found the documentation for FreeBSD to be very good, and once again as it is controlled by one team, you get a consistent standard.

There is the problem that like most open source OSes you have to be careful to choose hardware that is compatible.

Answer 2

I used a Solaris workstation when I supported Solaris servers at IBM several years ago. I ran versions 2.7 through 9, and I always had the same frustrations.

• Have to install GNU versions of everything. Our servers had all the GNU packages for tar, gzip, etc, and I used them on Linux systems of course.
• Lack of apt. At the time I was using Debian on my personal systems, and was spoiled by apt.
• Performance issues. On the same hardware, Solaris was slower than Debian-Sparc.

I understand OpenSolaris is "better" now, and Nexenta brings a "debian-like" user experience to a Solaris kernel, but I've since moved on to OS X (which is, IMO, the best desktop Unix platform available).

Answer 3

Ubuntu 9.04 is really really good from an end user point of view.

I tried OpenSolaris 2008.xxx before but didn't quite feel the same. Ubuntu has the advantage of packaging the latest version of common software ( gnome-do , Firefox for instance )

Of course Opensolairs hava ZFS , but that's not a Deskotop fature.

I've never got to install freebsd ... he.. :)

Answer 4

I use OpenSolaris both as a desktop and on my laptop. Before I used gentoo on both.

I like OpenSolaris mostly because of ZFS, which is very nice to have, even for a desktop. It simplifies filesystem management quite a lot. For instance, when upgrading the system OpenSolaris does a clone of the root filesystem and upgrades that filesystem. If something goes boo-boo you still have your old root filesystem intact, and going back to it is as simple as selecting it in the GRUB menu (I've had use of this feature a couple of times).

Another plus is that OpenSolaris is quite easy to use (all GNU tools are there too nowadays, by the way). Recently I enabled powersave and suspend on my laptop and it was as simple as adding a couple of lines in a /etc config file and running an update command, and voila.

The downsides still has to be driver support (getting better) and audio support, which I've had issues with (but that I got working).

I have completely irrational dislike of the FreeBSD ports system because of its heavy use of Makefiles as scripts (if I understood and remember it correctly).

Answer 5

I'm using OpenSolaris upgraded to the latest dev builds as my desktop. It is rock solid still quite fast, has a decent package management system and provides a bunch of features either missing or having poor equivalents with Gnu/Linux distros.

Most of the killer ones are one way or another related to ZFS:

• unlimited snapshots
• nautilus time slider
• clones
• snap-upgrade
• deduplication (with build 128 and newer)

Other unvaluable albeit technical features are zones, dtrace and crossbow.

When for some reason I need to use another OS like some Gnu/Linux distro or windows, I mostly use either an lx branded zone or VirtualBox that works flawlessly on top of OpenSolaris.

Answer 6

I have been using FreeBSD as my primary desktop since 4.2 was realeased ( I think that was in 2000 but could've been 2001). While there was a steep learning curve I have found it to be super solid and the ports certainly give you a good range of software to run. Version 8 is very quick and is stable as ever.

I have used both Linux and Open Solaris on my desktop but I find myself always coming back to FreeBSD because I know it and because I find it's lay out it easy to understand. I don't have to worry about things radically changing between releases. One of the reasons I went to FreeBSD in the first place was the Handbook is excellent. It is easy to understand and covers a lot of information a newbie needs.

Choose and OS and stick with it, the more you learn about it the easier things will get. If you try everything under the sun you will find yourself constantly fixing the same kinds of problems with out getting anywhere.

Cheers

Answer 7

FreeBSD 8.1 seems to have everything I should expect from an open source desktop. I started out onUbuntu and then tried every OS I could get my hands on. I learned how to do things on the cli now I use FreeBSD and could care less about using Ubuntu. FreeBSD has everything I need as a desktop, and a server.

Answer 8

I use FreeBSD 7.2 on my workstation at work and at home and it's rock solid. I reboot it a lot less than my Ubuntu desktop (which is quirky at times).