System management
How do you administer your realm?
Besides an easy to use installer, the availability of custom administration tools often help persuade users to move to a different computing environment. All the BSD OSes in the Roundup have custom binary package management tools to make it painless to flesh out installs.
MidnightBSD uses the homebrewed mports package management system that works in a similar way to APT to search, install and upgrade applications. Currently, it indexes about 2,600 packages for i386 and about 1,800 for amd64 architecture. Similarly, DragonFly BSD uses FreeBSD Ports as a base for its own ports collection (called Delta Ports), and you can also install packages using FreeBSD’s pkgng.
The default NetBSD install is also minimal but you’ll first have to set up its binary package manager before using it to install a desktop. Also, some BSDs, such as DragonFly BSD, use a configuration tool that runs at the end of the install to set up key aspects of the system such as the networking options.
While the package management systems of these three BSD OSes give access to all kinds of software they all lack a graphical package manager. If you’re spoilt by graphical config tools on modern Linux distros, you won’t get very far, especially with NetBSD as everything has to be set up by hand.
GhostBSD uses the standard system configuration tools that ship with the default desktop as well as Ddconf editor for fiddling with GTK settings. The OS relies on the OctoPkg front-end for its pkgng package management system and also makes it fairly easy to update both the system as well as installed apps.
TrueOS trumps the others in the number of custom tools. Its Control Panel helps you manage different aspects of your installation, such as adding new users, configuring network connections, setting up the firewall and more. Then there’s the backup tool, Life Preserver, which can sync to a remote FreeNAS system securely, using rsync and SSH. The OS uses FreeBSD’s ports and also publishes packages in its own PBI file format, which you can install via its AppCafe graphical package manager.