Another cool tool that is also in our plans is a PPPoE Setup Wizard. People love wizards; they don't like to have to think. One of the flagship features of PC-BSD is really the PBI concept. I mean it's very easy to type as root pkg_add -r firefox, but ease-of-use is relative. The bulk of computer users are more familiar using a wizard a làWindows/Mac OS X. With PC-BSD you have the choice, power users and new comers should be both happy, as each one uses what he's more comfortable with. Long-term FreeBSD users shouldn't worry about not having ports anymore; we have a fully functioning FreeBSD system under the hood!
Dru: Kris, please describe the new HAL back-end support. What is it and why would I want to use it?
Kris: Well, the HAL support was really a last-minute addition to the default PC-BSD base. When KDE 3.5.5 was ported over to FreeBSD, it fixed the issues 3.5.4 had with printing not working, which made it essential for us to include. Along with that fix, 3.5.5 switched over to the HAL back end for mounting and device access.
Essentially, what the HAL back end does is monitor the system hardware for device notifications and then provide a framework for KDE to mount or access the device. On my various test systems here, it seems to work fine, even providing extra details about the media that I am mounting. (For example, when I insert a 1GB USB flash drive, it correctly identifies it as a 1GB drive and mounts it.) HAL support works independently from the /etc/fstab file, which can make it easier for end users who don't know how to modify the fstab file manually to add a device.
That all said, HAL support on BSD is still relatively new, and may not work properly with all hardware setups. We are hoping that these issues will be resolved quickly and will issue online updates as soon as the port gets fixed. Anticipating this, I added an option to the PC-BSD "Services" tool, which lets you disable HAL from loading at boot-up, which may help the stability of systems where HAL isn't working with the hardware yet.
Dru: The PC-BSD 1.3 installer includes a GUI front end to create PF firewall rules. Which features of PF are currently supported and what are the PF plans for future releases?
Andrei: The hardest parts in the creation of an automated PF firewall generator are compatibility with local area networks behind NAT and direct internet connections. I think the current implementation is not as good as it is supposed to be, but at least it works. This is currently a work in progress and the overall concept of firewall in PC-BSD may change, but I hope OpenBSD Packet Filter is the right tool for this work and it stays here.
Standard features like scrubbing and keeping state are implemented, and for future releases, we plan to automatically detect what kind of connection is used on computer. Then we can block SMB shares and others not suitable for wider audience ports for direct internet connection. Maybe even spamd and QoS (ALTQ) enabled in firewall; right now we have ALTQ support enabled in kernel by default in case someone needs it right now without recompiling kernel. Features are not set in stone, so everyone who have good knowledge of firewalling in FreeBSD may give us fresh ideas and we'll try to make them available to our users.
Dru: Many PC-BSD users are migrating from Windows. Is there any type of support available for new users?
Kris: On the free side, we have a very active PC-BSD community on our forums, and most questions can probably be answered by some of the knowledgeable folks on there. We also have a FAQ database and Documentation project that helps users with common problems or questions, and is designed for the user who is migrating to PC-BSD for the first time.
Andrei: I think that most loyal PC-BSD users come with a Linux background, and good documentation is expected from users migrating from both Linux and Windows. Many new users just don't know where to look for documentation. Linux users are familiar with loads of how-to pages and don't know that the FreeBSD Handbook may help them out in 90 percent of cases. This is where the PC-BSD forums and users with excellent knowledge of subject can point newbies to proper documentation and help with advice if they find something not documented yet.
Commercial support is another story: companies want some stability and expect the operating system they migrate to is not going to /dev/null in near future. Of course, Open source-based systems can't just vanish, and if they have commercial backup support, like PC-BSD from iXsystems, then I think both parties can trust each other and help create PC-BSD even better.
Charles: Yes, there's our Quick Guide. There's also our community that besides kidding around a lot in the forum lounge is very helpful and professional when it comes to assisting newcomers. We always try to have an upbeat attitude. PC-BSD is driven by the will to offer a decent system to nontechnical users. Granted, the bulk of our community is power users, but nontechnical users, representing 90 percent of computer users, remain our main target. PC-BSD is still rough around the edges, but I'm confident that by 2.0, it'll be really good to the point that people will start spreading the word. It is currently well positioned at the BSDStats website.
You shouldn't spend half an hour (or more) tailoring your system to your taste. You shouldn't have to search on forums and on your favorite search engine to use your computer. I would go even further: you shouldn't have to read any documentation to use your computer. This might sound wrong to some power users, but I think common users will not change their system if they have to read documentation. Obviously, this is a whole different story for power users who want to use a vanilla version of FreeBSD to use it as a clustered web server where you need to read documentation. But in 2007, we have plans with the PBI developers, whom I congratulate for their hard work, to create a whole set of server PBIs that will just work. You will be able to install Apache/lighttpd with PHP/mod_python/RoR and MySQL/PostgreSQL. It'll work seamlessly without having to tweak configuration files.
As an example, you can download and install lighttpd, which I ported with Gonzalo from FreeBSD to PC-BSD. During installation, it asks a few questions, such as if you want to be the only one or if you want lighttpd to be used by other users, and it also asks if you want to start the service when PC-BSD starts. The installation wizard does the hard job of generating the configuration file for you. Once lighttpd is installed, you just have to open your favorite browser and access localhost/. Again, such details may not seem important for you and for me, but a user that has little experience with computers will find it handy and invaluable.
Dru: It takes the efforts of many people to bring about an operating system release. Who else was involved in this release?