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Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 23:52:36 +0200
From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
To: Jonathan McKeown <j.mckeown@ru.ac.za>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FreeBSD for the common man(or woman) (was: upgrade 7.2
 overwrites partitions)
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On Thu, 6 Aug 2009 09:56:59 +0200, Jonathan McKeown <j.mckeown@ru.ac.za> wrote:
> PC-BSD is FreeBSD, pre-packaged with a usable desktop and its own simplified 
> package manager.

If you're talking about PBI, that's what the "average user" expects:
You open a web browser (d'oh), search for what you think will be the
software you need (plus-d'oh) and download it (doubleplus-d'oh).
As long as you use PBI only, there's no interference with ports
or packages, but you are not encouraged to use a "mix", allthough
it's mostly possible.

Don't get me wrong: I have several friends who use PC-BSD for years
happily now, but it's definitely not my cup of tea for several
reasons. PC-BSD does probide a KDE-based preconfigured environment
and lots of preinstalled software. It's completely sufficient for
the "average user", allthough not for the "average user in Germany",
because KDE's internationalisation is not so good (Gnome's is better,
as far as I've seen), and not all PBI packages do conform to the
language setting (e. g. install in German, install kmplayer, it
will be in English, and error messages will be in English, too,
that scares the average German user away).


-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...