Months after I discovered FreeBSD’s excellent performance, and because my debian unstable desktop became, well, unstable, I decided to give FreeBSD as a desktop a try.
My desktop needs are pretty basic, I just need:
- GNOME: Originally I migrated from fluxbox to Gnome to “try linux as a real final user”, now I just can’t live without it. It is a solid, simple and elegant desktop. I need an enviroment with excellent Gnome support.
- Mplayer/xmms: I like to watch movies while I work. It helps me to relax. When I need to focus a little more (when I am programming), I need xmms for some good old Ludwig Van.
That is pretty much it. Both Firefox and xterm are everywhere, and I take them for granted.
FreeBSD covers this pretty well. The FreeBSD Gnome project provides a great enviroment and I was very happy with my desktop. I could see ALL my videos with mplayer, and I didn’t have flash installed in firefox (I HATE flash).
But after months of bliss, problems arised:
First, I when I tried to sync my palm wigh Gnome, it didn’t work. I remember this was damn easy in Debian. I just forgot about it and never used my palm again. I really didn’t care too much.
But then, something REALLY annoyed me.
When the Snakes and Rubies videos (Django and Ruby on Rails) were released, I couldn’t watch them in FreeBSD. I had to go to use a Windows box. I really tried everything I could but the codecs just didn’t work in FreeBSD. I gave up.
After that, an email in the django-users mailing list mentioned that the snake and rubies videos were in Google Video. The problem is that Google Video uses flash. I hate flash. I hate flash sites. Flash is awful.
But google video and youtube (also flash) are great sites, and have great stuff. I was missing all that.
This weekend I decided to install flash in FreeBSD.
I did. I installed the most recent “supported” version of flash in FreeBSD: Flash6. The problem is, both Google Video and youtube need Flash7 to work. And flash7 support in FreeBSD is pretty bad (there is no flash player for FreeBSD so it must run in linux-emulation mode).
Now, Installing Flash in FreeBSD is not as simple as it is in other OSs. For instance, the port that handles linux plugins for firefox is bugged, and wasn’t creating a plugins directory. I had to read Makefiles to see what was wrong and create that directory by hand.
Also, to install the Flash7 port, you must apply a patch in your core userland source code and recompile it. Can you believe that? Recompile the core of your operating system just to run flash? Anyway I did that. The docs said there was the risk in some systems that nothing would work.
And it didn’t work.
That was my las night with FreeBSD. I decided I needed another desktop. My list of candidates was short:
- Mandriva: Maybe, but it’s too KDE centric, I need a good Gnome desktop
- OpenSuse: Suse is good if you just install it and never touch it again. But it is by far the worst OS to upgrade. It breaks. It commits suicide. You have to fix things. It will waste your time. Avoid it like fire.
- Fedora: I used FC4 for a short period, a very solid desktop, but I still have nightmares with RPM.
- Debian: Now we are talking. The quintessential linux distro. My favorite linux for a server, but for a desktop, why should I use unstable when now I can use…
- Ubuntu: Ubuntu is what I was looking for. They are completly Gnome and Python centric. And best of all, it has everything good about debian (the packages) without what is not good about debian (the politics and the endless flamewars).
So I downloaded the latest beta of Ubuntu Dapper (beta4) and installed it this Monday. As usual with the new d-i I had no problems. But when I wanted to install the extra (non-free) stuff, like the nvidia drivers, mplayer and the codecs, realplayer, acrobat reader, the flash player, java and all that, I just used easyubuntu and after a few clicks I had everything I wanted installed and working. In minutes. I couldn’t believe that. Last sunday I wasted THREE hours of my life trying (and failing) to make Flash work in FreeBSD, and now after a some minutes and a few clicks, I had even more software I ever had in my FreeBSD desktop.
Probably I should tell you about what a PITA is the installation of java in FreeBSD.
It is a big, very big, PITA.
In ubuntu you can have it installed with a couple of mouse clicks.
Now, I know there are lots of elitist kids around believing that because they use a “complicated” desktop (*BSD, gentoo, debian?, slackware, linux from scratch) they are technically superior. That attitude is stupid.
I have lots of stuff to do, and most of it is a lot more complicated than setting up a desktop. Believe me, I have better things to do than configuring mplayer or making my webcam work. I just want to plug in things or click buttons and everything should work. Ubuntu and OSX do that. FreeBSD and gentoo don’t. Ubuntu and OSX win. The ubuntu motto is “linux for human beings”, it should be “linux for professionals without time to waste”. FreeBSD is for servers. Ubuntu for my desktop.
And I will not, ever, waste three hours of my time configuring flash again. I can design, develop and test a web app in Django in three hours. There is no time to waste.
