[PC-BSD Testing] PC-BSD 8.1 RC1 - thoughts and ideas

[Kris Moore]

On 07/07/2010 05:25, Johann Kois wrote:
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> On 07.07.2010 02:20, Mike Bybee wrote:
>    
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Johann Kois<jkois at freebsd.org
>> <mailto:jkois at freebsd.org>>  wrote:
>>
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>>      On 07.07.2010 01:02, finid at linuxbsdos.com
>>      <mailto:finid at linuxbsdos.com>  wrote:
>>      >>>
>>      >>  I actually like the development tab and use it regularly - I'd
>>      vote to
>>      >>  keep it. Realistically very few actual 'end users' use PC-BSD,
>>      but a lot
>>      >  of devs do.
>>      >
>>      >  Mike, those "end users" are actually waiting, desperately waiting for
>>      >  PC-BSD to become a lot more end user-friendly, so that they can
>>      use it.
>>      >
>>      >  --
>>      >  Fini D.
>>      >   ___________________________
>>
>>      Hm, you want to clarify what makes the system so "totally unusable" at
>>      the moment?  So that "the end-users" cannot use it?
>>
>>
>>      jkois
>>
>>      - --
>>       Johann Kois
>>       jkois(at)FreeBSD.org
>>       FreeBSD Documentation Project
>>       FreeBSD German Documentation Project - https://doc.bsdgroup.de
>>
>>
>> If you mean that seriously, I can provide notes from my most recent
>> pilot project. If you're being facetious, then I would recommend you go
>> find a random business person and ask them to use PC-BSD for 2 weeks.
>>
>>      
> I am always serious.  No time for joking around on mailinglists.  But if
> such a statement as above is made (and "cannot use a system" for me
> equals "is not usable, therefore unusable") I just want to know what
> exactly the encountered problems are.
>
> But that is not the real point here.  I agree there are several issues
> regarding the usage of PC-BSD which will/can create problems especially
> for end-users (by that I mean newer/less experienced users).
>
> But:
>
> - - Are all these problems documented somewhere?  And I am not talking
> about a post on a mailinglist here, because it is pretty easy to miss
> such reports within all the posts on the list.  Maybe they are all
> reported on http://trac.pcbsd.org as feature requests/problem reports?
> - - If they are all documented/reported.  Is there enough manpower to
> investigate/implement all these changes?  Does the PC-BSD Project even
> have the possibility to change/fix all of them?  I think we know the
> answer to that questions (unfortunately) ...
> - - What is/should be the ultimate goal of PC-BSD?  Making experiencing
> "BSD on the desktop" easier?  Or make it the "perfect desktop
> experience"?  In reality it is probably the first one, but what many
> people would like to see is the second one (again mostly a problem of
> available manpower/ressources).
>
>
>
> jkois
>    

Lots of good ideas here and important fixes to improve PC-BSD, however 
what it always comes down to is time and manpower. Obviously if I could 
fix every single thing here in the next few weeks / months / year I 
would. But that's just not realistic at this point, so instead for each 
major & point release I try to identify a few key areas which need 
improvement and work on those, get them done and then move on.

This is open-source though, so if anybody has a particular key area they 
want to see improved, then by all means get hacking. If enough people 
take on just a single task we can start to make a dent in a lot of these 
things rather quickly. I've just setup our TODO list for 9.0 which is 
about a year out, with some of the big issues I have on my plate to 
start fixing:

http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/PC-BSD_9.0_TODO

Feel free to add yourselves to the list with goals to have done for 9 or 
e-mail me if you want to discuss any other specific ideas to work on. If 
you want to work on something FreeBSD specific, like laptop suspend / 
sleep / resume then we can probably point you in the right direction :)

-- 
Kris Moore
PC-BSD Software
iXsystems