TrueBSD

TrueBSD is a LiveDVD operating system based on FreeBSD with many useful applications. All open programs will keep working even when you eject LiveDVD (using command cdcontrol eject) in order to get some data from your own CDs.

Origin – Home Page: Russia – TrueBSD

Desktop: KDE, Gnome, Compiz/Beryl, Xfce. Gnome is the default desktop environment.

Price: Free and Open Source

Comments: TrueBSD is a LiveDVD BSD operating system, with option to install to hard disk from the Live environment. The installer, aside from one minor omission during disk partitioning, is essentially the same as that of FreeBSD. That is also just another way of conveying that it is text-based.

What you get after installation is exactly the same as the LiveDVD desktop – a very friendly Gnome desktop with all the essential software needed for every day computing. The full OpenOffice.org Office suite, as well as Abiword word processor are available from the menu. The Skype chat/VOIP client is also available, but we could not get Skype to launch (a bug, perhaps).

Firefox is the default Web browser, and the usual array of desktop graphics and multimedia applications – are installed and ready to use. The system will auto-detect inserted usb disks, but will not auto-play DVD video. You’ll have to change the preference from System -> Preference -> Removable Drive & Media in order for the system to, for example, auto-play DVD video.

From the Gnome desktop, you can access the full range of your favorite KDE applications – K3B, Amarok, Konqueror, etc. Wine Doors, for those still needing to run their favorite Windows applications, is available from the main menu.

The version that we used for this post is a release candidate (2.0RC1), and, therefore, has its share of bugs. This page will be updated once a stable version is released. But even at a release candidate, TrueBSD is, by our assessment, one of the better desktop-centric BSD distros.

Download/Buy:: A DVD iso image is available for download.

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