Category: Geeks r Us
Hi all. I was chatting to some folks on a BSD podcast I like to listen to, and I do believe, in good faith, that we will have an accessible form of PcBSD headed our way soon. For those of us who use Linux, BSD is similar in that it is a UNIX flavor, but it doesn't, out of the box, have support for Speakup. But the PcBSD folks plan to make it with Orca and I do believe some variant of Gnome; I'll need to follow up on that.
Why on earth would you want to use Open BSD as your main OS though? With Gnome & Orca slapped on top 99% of people wouldn't notice any difference between that and one of the more popula distros. Doing battle with it over SSH is more than enough for me thanks.
PC BSD is different then open BSD. It is designed more for desktop use. As far as why it instead of Linux, two things I can think of. One is the PF firewall which is not available on Linux. Second is your views on software freedom. The GPL and BSD lisences are quite different. I'm more of a BSD fan for this reason but generally use Linux because it's easier to get cheep VPS servers with.
Keep us updated. As one who is in the process of switching to Linux, I'm interested in trying this new system, provided that I can run it from a cd, dvd, or usb. I would like to try the various versions of Linux out there, as well as different desktops. I'm starting out with Adriane (the built-in 100% accessible desktop in Knoppix), and Gnome with Orca, as well as the commandline.
PF is a good firewall, and it has understandable syntax. I've tinkered a bit with Iptables, but it's a bit cryptic. I'll have to look at the two licenses and get a side-by-side comparison. Looks like 10.01 Edge, PCBSD is on the move soon.