1. Submitted by Anonymous, Friday 1st June 2007

funny, how things change. just 2 moths ago I would say the same about Sarge and USB support.
gonne are the days when the "real" men used linux and the rest Windows. :)

2. Submitted by jake, Friday 1st June 2007

OK all round review. However, this is a graphical interface for ports, albeit buggy (often freezes). I've upgraded to 1.3.4 without any drama and installed packages via PBI. But the reason I tried PC-BSD - it's much vaunted superior stability vis-a-vis Linux - has proven less than true. I can regularly crash PC-BSD by trying to install a printer via CUPS. Admittedly this could be a cups problem (it simply refuses to see my HP-C3180), nevertheless the system cannot handle it.
OTH, Ubuntu, PCLOS, Mepis, SAM and Sabayon all install my printers w/o fuss & have never crashed (frozen yes, but recovered).
PC-BSD needs a lot more work before it can claim any inherent superiority over Linux *on the desktop*. I'll drop in again around v1.5.

3. Submitted by W. Anderson, Friday 1st June 2007

The review of PCBSD 1.3 has many mis-directed and false statements, and clearly indicates a great deal of ignorance and inexperience about FreeBSD by the author.

For example, I have personally, along with associated technology professionals installed "dozens" of PCBSD releases, many with custom HD configurations, so for the writer to claim that one "cannot" modify existing default "slices" or add new ones is simply ridiculous. Furthermore
using GNUParted is totally unnecessary, as my 17 years of age granddaughter can perform such action without separate graphical utility crutch.

It is sickening that more and more articles about Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) are appearing on the internet - as blogs, tech reports, etc - that are completely erroneous (technically) and simply should never leave the trash bin.

4. Submitted by Mike, free-bees.co.uk, Friday 1st June 2007

In response to #3:

As I said, I couldn't find anywhere to change the partitioning of the hard drive in the installation, but I might have been missing the obvious - could you kindly point out where the partitions can be changed? (When I say partitions, I mean the partition that will be used as the PC-BSD slice)

As for the use of GParted... I find most users prefer to use a graphical utility. Your experience may vary.

5. Submitted by eVelez, Tuesday 28th August 2007

W. Anderson's reply is part of the reason why it's taken this long to see distributions like PC-BSD and PCLinuxOS, among a few others.. way too many dipholes still manning the fort.

We are entering a stage where more and more users are turning to Linux and now *BSD for various reasons. Most of these users are coming from the Windows world.

There is nothing wrong with an objective article discussing some of the pitfalls of an Operating System. Too often a critique of the 'old ways of doing things'(tm) is met with petty insults from childish men with issues regarding their own intelligence. Aside from the insults, they offer nothing of value to the article or comments. It's doubtful they offer anything of value to the distributions they heckle and the many conversations they close.

I tried PC-BSD recently because, like a few other distros, this is aimed at users transitioning from other OSes... who want to get work done first as their primary objective. Do I have a BSD version I can recommenend to newbies or casual computer users? The answer is yes!!

It is not FreeBSD, W. Anderson. It is suppose to be designed for people who have never used the system before... designed for people with little to no experience with *BSD.

I was thoroughly impressed by what the PC-BSD team has done by placing a friendly and useful face (with many powerful tweaks) on top of FreeBSD.

It still needs some work - mainly a rock-solid and stable Ports Manager as part of the core to handle the many thousands of available files for this system. PBI is a great solutiion and worked very well but there arent't nearly enough of them (many are also dated).

PC-BSD along with Linux distros such as PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu and a few others are heralding a new era... Linux/*BSD have arrived and are ready (or a few points of ready) for the mass market.

I expect there are going to be many more blogs, articles, opinions and so much more from people who actually use these operating systems for the first time. It is their right and I look forward to providing useful guidance whenever I am qualified to do so.

I hope other experienced Linux and *BSD users also understand that what's happening in the X world is great news for FOSS. It should also foster in much needed competition in the software sector. Alot of these people are going to ask questions and they'll need your help.

Peace...