https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/61181/#post-352450

Well, if the OP objective is to find something like a pre-cooked FreeBSD for some reason, I would go with GhostBSD instead of TrueOS. I do not use it but GhostBSD deviate very little from the vanilla FreeBSD.

I have absolute nothing against TrueOS but I think it is too much customized for my taste, to the point you cannot use pkg(8) without the risk of breaking the system.

It is interesting because:
- set GhostBSD as directly competing with TtueOS and FreeBSD
- it remarks one "pro": "deviate very little from the vanilla FreeBSD"
- it remarks one TrueOS "cons": "too much customized"

All in all we are in a good position, and with the additions of our own repos we are going to competing better against both OSes.

- a last point is also interesting: "I do not use it"
and the question here is "why ?" Your thoughts ?

Why? I would not be surprised that it is because GhostBSD is releasing an one year old version every release.

ericbsd wrote:Why? I would not be surprised that it is because GhostBSD is releasing an one year old version every release.

OK, it means we should prepare the next release in advance.
May be we should setup a development-release based on 11-STABLE ?

ASX wrote:It is interesting because:
- set GhostBSD as directly competing with TtueOS and FreeBSD
- it remarks one "pro": "deviate very little from the vanilla FreeBSD"
- it remarks one TrueOS "cons": "too much customized"

All in all we are in a good position, and with the additions of our own repos we are going to competing better against both OSes.

I think that GhostBSD is not that well known even among FreeBSD people. When it comes to FreeBSD, there's the vanilla release obviously and then there's PC-BSD/TrueOS, OPNsense/pfSense and FreeNAS/TrueNAS. You don't hear about GhostBSD that often - at least that's what my impression is. Still for people who like a "simple desktop FreeBSD" we're definitely a good contender to TrueOS for a couple of reasons. Especially the "doesn't deviate too much from FreeBSD" is actually a valid strong point. Another would be "it's lighter (and probably less confusing) than TrueOS".

- a last point is also interesting: "I do not use it"
and the question here is "why ?" Your thoughts ?

Besides what Eric mentions, "something like a pre-cooked FreeBSD for some reason" also sounds like "I know enough about my OS to just install vanilla FreeBSD and put whatever desktop/WM and programs on there that I want". If it wasn't for the nice, polished GTK desktop experience that GhostBSD provides (and my wish that an out-of-the-box *BSD desktop solution would claim a more popular position so that there isn't only Linux), I'd also still be happy with FreeBSD and doing things by hand (or by automation script rather).

There's two last machines that I frequently use that are not GhostBSD, however: My workstation at work and my laptop for on-call duty. The reason here is that I do have to use GELI on them. I've started looking at gbi, to see if I can play with it a bit but I didn't get too far, yet.

ASX wrote:

ericbsd wrote:Why? I would not be surprised that it is because GhostBSD is releasing an one year old version every release.

OK, it means we should prepare the next release in advance.
May be we should setup a development-release based on 11-STABLE ?

That's also what I proposed a while back. The PC that I'm currently working with is running 11.1-PRERELEASE that I build every other day, BTW, and I've got graphical issues (nothing that makes the machine unusable but I'd say that this is not that cool).

For GELI do not look a GBI look at pc-sysinstall. GBI does already support the GELI true pc-sysinstall but I hided the code because of pour GELI support on pc-sysinstall.

I concur with kraileth that GhostBSD is not well known and also is hardly ever mentioned with the other BSDs for some reason. When people talk about the BSDs they mention FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, TrueOS, Dragonfly etc. but for some reason don't mention GhostBSD.
However on the positive side everyone that reviews GhostBSD is very impressed with it and this is a very good sign. I have yet to see a bad review of GhostBSD.
In my opinion after having used PC-BSD and had a look at TrueOS, GhostBSD is far better in almost every way if not every way. For me TrueOS was way too heavy, slow and buggy. It was also quite ugly.
But I appreciate what they are doing over there and I hope they improve it. I also like the idea of a native BSD desktop.

I have got the idea of an native BSD Desktop first and it is easy to track on the net not after my interview with BSDNow witch I mentioned​ that I am interested to create a DE for BSD, PCBSD Started Lumina.I learn that when I have great idea keep it for yourself​.

There is couple that make GhostBSD not much know FreeBSD user do not care about project like GhostBSD or TrueOS, the lake of advocate, and we don't innovate.

ericbsd wrote:II learn that when I have great idea keep it for yourself​.

Indeed! Couldn't agree more.

There is couple that make GhostBSD not much know FreeBSD user do not care about project like GhostBSD or TrueOS, the lake of advocate, and we don't innovate.

Kindly disagree here, as highligted later in the freebsd forum thread, people do care about functionality over innovation:

True but if we stuck with Gnome 2.12 and for those 12 years since 2005 purely focussed on compatibility, tweaks, fixes rather than always playing catchup with the latest (arguably broken) upstream releases, we could have had an advanced and extremely robust DE by now. I tried back then but failed. Gnome in it's current state was too large for one person, but with a small team (i.e gnome@), this would have been very possible.
It is so silly that this 12 year old screenshot of an older Gnome: http://www.osnews.com/img/11800/gnome1.png shows more functionality than most modern environments.

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/61181/#post-352772

When I we not innovate, I don't mean like doing something new or reinventing the wheel, I mean look at mac OSX the interface did not change but they have innovate on the look of the interface. Sure that's when innovation is always look at something really big, but it is not always the case.

GhostBSD did not innovate much we just put stuff together and destribut it and when it something doesn't exist in the BSD world we have to do it our self yes it is kind of innovation.

Yeah Oh sure I miss the old Gnome that was full not systemd and all broken on BSD. It is also why I have move to MATE the only problem is MATE is not well ported to FreeBSD and lot feature does not work. I would like to change that but it is a lot of time I don't have.

ericbsd wrote:When I we not innovate, I don't mean like doing something new or reinventing the wheel, I mean look at mac OSX the interface did not change but they have innovate on the look of the interface. Sure that's when innovation is always look at something really big, but it is not always the case.

GhostBSD did not innovate much we just put stuff together and destribut it and when it something doesn't exist in the BSD world we have to do it our self yes it is kind of innovation.

Yeah Oh sure I miss the old Gnome that was full not systemd and all broken on BSD. It is also why I have move to MATE the only problem is MATE is not well ported to FreeBSD and lot feature does not work. I would like to change that but it is a lot of time I don't have.

By preparing our own repos we have just put the basis to allow for package customization, so we are on the right track.

Gnome was metioned as a (counter)example to say: instead of changing continously, just fix what we have and it is already running.