helloSystem Wants To Be The "macOS of BSDs" With A Polished Desktop Experience

[phoronix]

Phoronix: helloSystem Wants To Be The "macOS of BSDs" With A Polished Desktop Experience

While it was a sad blow when PC-BSD/TrueOS stopped pursuing its desktop ambitions as what was arguably the leading BSD desktop operating system out there with a nice end-user experience, since then we have seen efforts like MidnightBSD, GhostBSD, and others fill the avoid with continuing to enhance the out-of-the-box BSD desktop system. A new entrant that is quite interesting is helloSystem that aims to be a "macOS of BSDs" for a polished desktop experience...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=helloSystem-BSD

[aspen]

"macOS of BSDs"

the funny thing is macOS is actually a derivative of the original UNIX.

[eugene2k]

Isn't macOS the macOS of BSDs already, given that its kernel is based on FreeBSD?

[kpedersen]

Isn't macOS the macOS of BSDs already, given that its kernel is based on FreeBSD?

Its kernel isn't BSD based. It is Mach based [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)] . A microkernel very different to the monolithic BSD / Linux ones.

It does however have a predominantly BSD userland (becoming a little bit more GNU in recent years). It also has a BSD subsystem which you can see in the installer leading people to believe it is BSD based. To be fair, it is understandably easy to make this mistake and connect these dots.

This belief macOS is just FreeBSD with a nifty user-interface is what makes some people jump into the FreeBSD forums asking that launchd should be used by FreeBSD. Or that it should get an installer or desktop environment that looks like macOS. There must be some psychology behind this.

The "non-gui" version of macOS is Darwin. Unfortunately since after version 8.x, it was distributed only in source form and also no longer a complete system.

[pabloski]

"macOS of BSDs"

the funny thing is macOS is actually a derivative of the original UNIX.

With a BSD microkernel under the belt and a lot of code "borrowed" from FreeBSD.

But the real problem is the hardware support. Apple builds OS + hardware, so macOS can have top notch support for the hardware it will be running on. FreeBSD has big problems with entire classes of hardware. For example, I have found no way to let it use a Broadcom BCM4313 Wifi NIC.

So how could they possible produce something that "just works out of the box"?

[mirmirmir]

"Polished Desktop Experience"

the funny thing is when you see it's readme file. it's basically giving us several external links for their vision. do they even understand what they are doing? Polished desktop? they don't even bother to tell us what they want to do with their project

[Alexmitter]

Oh, another €lementary O$, now based on a kernel that is about on the same state as a early 2000s Linux. But who cares, people with the taste of a Russian oligarch need their DEs too.

[kpedersen]

But the real problem is the hardware support. Apple builds OS + hardware, so macOS can have top notch support for the hardware it will be running on. FreeBSD has big problems with entire classes of hardware.

FreeBSD supports vastly more hardware than macOS. Have you tried to get your BCM4313 Wifi NIC working on macOS?

You need a slightly different mindset. Buy hardware that works with the OS. Just like you would (forced to do) for macOS.

FreeBSD will always support hardware for every generation. However it cannot possibly support 100% of the hardware for each generation. Just buy wisely.

Ballpark figures. For each generation, Linux supports about 80% of the hardware. FreeBSD supports about 50%. Both are pretty darn good if you think about the absolute mess that hardware vendors make for everybody.

[Sonadow]

FreeBSD supports vastly more hardware than macOS. Have you tried to get your BCM4313 Wifi NIC working on macOS?

You need a slightly different mindset. Buy hardware that works with the OS. Just like you would (forced to do) for macOS.

FreeBSD will always support hardware for every generation. However it cannot possibly support 100% of the hardware for each generation. Just buy wisely.

Ballpark figures. For each generation, Linux supports about 80% of the hardware. FreeBSD supports about 50%. Both are pretty darn good if you think about the absolute mess that hardware vendors make for everybody.

And Windows supports 100% of them by virtue of it being the de facto desktop and laptop OS. Any single hardware that is designed to be used with a desktop, laptop or workstation will definitely have downloadable and installable Windows drivers available, either by Microsoft or the hardware vendors themselves.

Copy-pasta from a previous post on drivers:

I tried FreeBSD 12.0-stable and FreeBSD13.0-BETA on an old laptop with an AMD Radeon card 3470HD card with a 3200HD in Hybrid Crossfire.

In both cases, X refused to start on startx, refused to perform Xorg -configure (keeps returning errors about no screens found or some other issue), and simply refuses to use to vesa driver even though i edited xorg.conf to do so while removing any references to the unused 3200HD.

And when I tried to run pkg install drm-kmod drm-legacy-kmod to install the radeon driver, the system immediately hardlocked. In contrast, Windows 10 + latest legacy AMD drivers worked like a charm.

No thanks.

[cen1]

The idea is not bad, let's see if they can deliver.