updating a FreeBSD workstation

[Odhiambo Washington]

On Sat, 23 May 2020 at 09:39, Doug Denault <doug at safeport.com> wrote:

> Thoughts/questions on updating a FreeBSD desktop.
>
> This comes out of the "FreeBSD 12.0 end-of-life" thread. It seems to me
> there
> are two distinct sets of users: server and desktop. There have to be a few
> like
> me with a foot in each camp. My server problem was largely of my own
> making (no
> serial console and the data center was a 4+ hour drive at the wrong time
> of
> day). Solved that one. For me I have have no real issues keeping
> production
> servers update to date. My main issues have been with MySQL and PHP, not
> FreeBSD.
>
> The desktop is a whole different thing. My solution has been every so
> often
> start fresh because I can not afford the time to risk a non-working
> desktop.
> When the ports moved to being based on the release head I had high hopes.
> I
> think I did not understand what that actually meant. My environment is
> xfce with
> enough stuff to give me something close to my partner's OS/X system. In
> addition
> to the "normal" stuff for me this means having, firefox, chrome,
> libreoffice,
> mysql and tigervnc. This ends up with 625 (or so) ports and packages. I
> did my
> current system in December.
>

To be honest, unless one has a lot of time on their hands for messing
around, FreeBSD
is not what you want for a Desktop environment. Use your Linux of choice
and have a
foothold in both worlds.
Look at it this way: Ardent FreeBSD guys started PC-BSD, which was quite
good for the
Desktop. They then changed to TrueOS (just the name) and finally decided
that TrueOS
is better left to be their server version and https://project-trident.org/ to
be their Desktop
version. The later is based on something called Void Linux (I am hearing
about that for
the first time today after your post prompted me to look for PC-BSD,
TrueOS).
So either head to Project Trident or just identify some Linux for the
Desktop. You will have
and an easier life.


-- 
Best regards,
Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
Nairobi,KE
+254 7 3200 0004/+254 7 2274 3223
"Oh, the cruft.", grep ^[^#] :-)