FreeBSD Working On Improving Its Audio Stack & Creating Graphical OS Installer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD Working On Improving Its Audio Stack & Creating Graphical OS Installer

The FreeBSD project has published its Q1'2024 status report to outline various advancements over the past few months...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-Q1-2024-Progress

[sophisticles]

FreeBSD should have had a graphical installer decades ago, but no work was done on one because there was a lot of resistance from BSD users that consider it a badge of honor to be able to say they installed BSD successfully.

The sad thing is that back in 2015 the FreeBSD Foundation raised over 650 grand but spent close to 1.1 million, in 2023 they raised 1.4 million in donations but are still under water by a million:

https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/mid-year-fundraising-campaign-kick-off/

https://freebsdfoundation.org/about-us/about-the-foundation/financials/

This is either a poorly run organization or a corruptly run organization.

Someone is getting fat and giggly over there.

I want in; I wonder how I get on the payroll?

[cen1]

hope it includes zfs support..

[User29]

LOL

The text based installer is just perfect. Really, one of the best things of FBSD.

Audio: yeah, sure. You'll have a better audio experience while listening to YT and audio streams on your outstanding wifi connection... Oh wait

[blendingsentinel]

Going the Debian route perhaps? Nice.

[flakmirror]

Can someone in the know point me towards information about UnionFS? I mean a spinoff of it appears to be OverlayFS which we all know (and well, the only one of these that I know...) and UnionFS can be used somehow instead of it? Now... OverlayFS is part of the kernel but UnionFS appears not to be... is there a specific reason for it?

And as UnionFS seems to be getting more FreeBSD adoption, I wonder why this choice.

Yeah, I'm clueless here.

[monty11ez]

FreeBSD already has one of the best audio systems. How programs interact with it might could be improved, but the base system is great.

[kpedersen]

FreeBSD should have had a graphical installer decades ago, but no work was done on one because there was a lot of resistance from BSD users that consider it a badge of honor to be able to say they installed BSD successfully.

Nonsense. Its the same UI that FreeBSD users have been enjoying for almost a decade. Just instead of using an ncurses-based dialog(1), it is exploring the use of i.e Xdialog(1) instead.

The keypresses are the same and since FreeBSD traditionally always had a mouse enabled terminal, the mouse clicks are also remaining the same.

It will just look a little uglier now and require larger installation media

I want in; I wonder how I get on the payroll?

Make a donation large enough to make up the shortfall and they might consider you!

[phoenix_rizzen]

FreeBSD should have had a graphical installer decades ago, but no work was done on one because there was a lot of resistance from BSD users that consider it a badge of honor to be able to say they installed BSD successfully.

A GUI installer is not required especially when there is a working, usable, easy-to-use TUI. It's like complaining that Ubuntu Server doesn't have a GUI installer, or that Debian doesn't have a GUI installer (the GUI is just a wrapper around the TUI and works exactly the same).

It's not like FreeBSD installs are done via the command-line running esoteric commands. Sometimes, if you want to do weird and wonderful ZFS pool setups, it's easier to do it via the CLI before running the installer. But that's the same with Ubuntu and other Linux distros that support ZFS; even when the installer includes ZFS support, it's better to create the pool setup via the CLI to get it setup correctly before running the installer.

Hopefully they go the way of Debian and just write a GUI wrapper around the existing TUI, rather than doing the Ubuntu way of having completely separate CLI, TUI, and GUI installers that don't work the same way.

[skeevy420]

FreeBSD should have had a graphical installer decades ago, but no work was done on one because there was a lot of resistance from BSD users that consider it a badge of honor to be able to say they installed BSD successfully.

BTW, I use FreeBSD

The sad thing is that back in 2015 the FreeBSD Foundation raised over 650 grand but spent close to 1.1 million, in 2023 they raised 1.4 million in donations but are still under water by a million:

This is either a poorly run organization or a corruptly run organization.

Someone is getting fat and giggly over there.

I want in; I wonder how I get on the payroll?

The majority of the funding goes towards programmers, supporting their infrastructure, and then conferences. It isn't poorly ran, it's poorly funded. I suppose poorly funded can be seen as synonymous with poorly ran, but it can also be seen as failings of the capitalistic institutions that don't like to fund the necessary things their societies, people, and businesses depend on like teachers, first responders, open source software, and public infrastructure like parks, sidewalks, and roads.