Systems I Am Currently Running Through 2024

Things change as life goes on and I have recently found the need to work with BSD a bit. So throughout this year I will be testing and running a BSD XFCE DE system. I have decided to run Ghost BSD because its installer and base .rc system is the easiest for new BSD users to work with and learn as they go; and XFCE is certainly one of the simplest and user friendly desktops. I have also made some changes in my home office and will run Linux Lite as my main system for a while (at least until Linux Lite 7.x is released). I will continue to run LMDE Cinnamon as a spare main system as it has grown on me over the last year or so, and Wayland support is now on the horizon for Cinnamon. I intend to make it my default main system rather than Debian Bookworm after Linux Lite 7.x is released. As always I will continue to run and test Linux Lite on hardware, hyper-v, and qemu/kvm after 7.x comes out. Towards the end of the year I hope to build a BSD with the Wayfire compositor. I have ended my testing of Bunsen Labs and Devuan for the time being though they are both fine stable and efficient Linux distros.

Ghost BSD XFCE An Initial Configuration

One of the new user friendly applications in Ghost BSD is the Software Station, which is enough like Synaptic package manager to have a familiar feel to it. New users will notice that not all the Debian/Ubuntu packages they may have known are available, but the selection is certainly diverse enough to allow for the customizing of a system for specific needs. See images below:

There is a convenient ZFS backup utility to initiate saved specific boot environments, which is handy when working with BSD installations. See image below:

Of course the XFCE graphical settings mod is available with the XFCE installation. See image below:

I can report after thorough testing that Remmina and SSH work perfectly as expected including VNC and RDP. See image below:

Though minimal Office applications are installed during the initial installation routine, the LibreOffice suite is available from the Software Station. See image below:

All in all this is a BSD that shows a promise of entering the mainstream DE user groups. Though there are drawbacks with BSD there are advantages as well. I truly appreciate the effort put into simplifying the installation process for this BSD.

2) My Current Linux Lite & LMDE Systems