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DesktopBSD is a UNIX-like, desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD. Its goal is to combine the stability of FreeBSD with the ease-of-use of KDE, which is the default graphical user interface. It is available for the IA-32 and AMD64 platforms.
History and development
DesktopBSD is essentially a customized installation of FreeBSD and is not a fork of FreeBSD. DesktopBSD is always based on FreeBSD's latest -STABLE branch but incorporates certain customized, pre-installed software such as KDE and DesktopBSD utilities and configuration files.
A common misconception about DesktopBSD is that it is intended as a rival to PC-BSD as a BSD-based desktop distribution, since they are similar in structure and goals. However, the DesktopBSD project was started approximately one year before the PC-BSD project, despite the fact that the first PC-BSD release came out long before DesktopBSD's. Neither the DesktopBSD nor PC-BSD projects intend to rival each other and are completely independent projects with distinctive features and very different attitudes.
The first release candidate of DesktopBSD 1.0 was released on July 25, 2005; the current release is 1.0 final which was made available on March 28, 2006.
Features
* Graphical installer allowing to partition disks and create users
* Graphical tool for managing, installing and updating software using FreeBSD ports system
* Graphical management of network interfaces and mounting/unmounting drives
Current release is based on FreeBSD 5.5-PRERELEASE and KDE 3.5.1.
This entry uses material from from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. Disclaimer.