Initial thoughts about PC-BSD

[Please note: this is a historical post – I’m no longer running *BSD in 2014, and this is a collection of thoughts on its setup in case I decide to return to the operating system. Further posts from me will focus on other Linux experiences.]

So after not too much effort, I’ve gotten PC-BSD to replace my FreeBSD installation and am back up and running. Some minor tips, interesting facts and tweaks:

  • Default filesystem and mountpoints all seem to be ZFS, which would make PC-BSD probably the quickest and easiest way to get a functional desktop environment running with this neat filesystem.
  • To enable Flash playback in Chromium (and I assume Firefox), run
    flashpluginctl on

    from the terminal (under your own user account, not root) and restart the browser. Thanks to the PC-BSD forums for this answer.

  • Enabling SSH server: add sshd_enable=”YES” to /etc/rc.conf, then /etc/rc.d/sshd start. You’ll also need to allow TCP port 22 inbound through the firewall in the PC-BSD Control Panel/Networking/Firewall Manager application.
  • Sound worked out of the box without any driver finagling, and is a much more simplistic setup:

 

From the PC-BSD Control Panel, a very simple way to select the default sound device.
From the PC-BSD Control Panel, a very simple way to select the default sound device.

I’m assuming the situation would have been better than the Kubuntu trials and tribulations with PulseAudio – all the possible nVidia HDMI output ports are listed in this dropdown list, as well as my onboard sound and USB/stereo audio adapter. In Phonon, the list is much simpler:

No greyed-out cards or shenanigans - Phonon just shows the default sound card from PC-BSD.
No greyed-out cards or “missing sink”s – Phonon just shows the default sound card from PC-BSD.

 

So far this has been a pretty great introductory experience – the desktop is polished, KDE integration appears to work well, and manual configuration has been limited to what I’d consider more advanced functionality like the SSH daemon.



Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*