FreeBSD (GhostBSD) Question?

[Don Wilde]

On 7/22/20 8:22 AM, Paul Pathiakis via freebsd-questions wrote:
>   Hi Lonnie,
> GhostBSD is FreeBSD running a MATE Desktop.
> Yes, it's incredibly stable.  Yes, it's well designed and implemented.  Yes, as my 80+ y.o. mother-in-law will tell you, it's easy to use.  (I don't have to spend 1-3 hours removing malware, spyware and viruses on the Windoze desktop she used to have.  (She went from PC-BSD, to TrueOS to GhostBSD over the last 7 years....  and my life has been wonderful when visiting since.... :D )
> SO... kudos to their team.  It prompts when it finds updates necessary and it's so very useful in finding, installing, removing software via their 'software station'.
> Yes, I'm a big fan.
> Paul
>
>      On Tuesday, July 21, 2020, 6:52:35 PM EDT, Lonnie Cumberland <lonnie at outstep.com> wrote:
>   
>   Greeting All,
>
> Although I am committed to now taking the plunge and go all of the way with
> the FreeBSD platform, I wanted to get a FreeBSD distro flavor that already
> had a desktop and I could just install while I work on this current FreeBSD
> related project that I am doing now.
>
> With that in mind, here is what I tried.
>
> 1. FreeBSD 12.1 (core iso) --- This one boos up great on my hardware but
> seems like it will take a bit of work to get a graphical environment setup,
> which I can do, but time is short right now.
>
> 2. FuryBSD --- This is supposed to basically be FreeBSD 12.1 with a
> graphical environment already setup, but for some reason, bot the KDR and
> XFCE (amd64) ISO's would not completely boot up and went to a blank screen.
> I could not even login on a non-graphical console. Strange.
>
> 3. GhostBSD --- This one also seems like they took the FreeBSD 12.1 iso and
> added a graphical frontend since I actually see it saying "Booting FreeBSD
> 12.1" as it comes up.
>
> To my surprise, GhostBSD seems to come up nicely.
>
> My question to the mailing list is this. Is it accurate to say that
> GhostBSD is just FreeBSD with a graphical environment added?
>
> I ask, because I want to stay with FreeBSD, but just do not want to spend
> the time right now setting up the GUI and fine tuning, so I am taking the
> lazy way for the time being and will come back at a later time to do a
> fresh FreeBSD install from scratch.
Okay, so I bit. Manish, I started using your 'mkdesktop', but I stopped. 
No matter what I do, it wants to give me all kinds of what the Doze 
world calls 'accessories'.

GhostBSD seems to want to do the same thing. MATE is every bit as fat as 
Ubuntu! I want an intermediate step where I can choose what to add after 
the desktop is installed.

I don't see that any of these GUI installers help a whole bunch for what 
I want. I can see their usefulness for those who come from the Doze or 
Mac -- or even Ubuntu -- worlds, but that's not where I want to go. I'll 
just do it the old-fashioned way because I want to know what's getting 
installed.

-- 
Don Wilde
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