Is PC-BSD a Linux based?

PC-BSD, the first desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD, is rapidly becoming a viable open source alternative to Linux on the desktop.

Last weeks, InternetNews published a brief article covering the release of PC-BSD 1.4 and giving space to project founder Kris Moore.

What are the major improvements in the new version?

"Our new GUI tools will greatly assist in setting up networking, such as wireless connections, something which had been rather difficult in the past. The X.Org GUI tool also allows the user to easily set their screen resolution, and driver with 3D support on the first boot." On the subject of future plans, Moore has this to say: "We try to have a new release out every six months or so. With 1.4 it took closer to nine months, with several of those months going towards implementing a whole new build process. Now that it's in place, the next release may be closer to the six-month mark, depending upon the release schedule of FreeBSD 7, and KDE 4 of course."

At the desktop we have a full KDE 3.5.7 decorated with a nice gradient blue wallpaper with a white PC-BSD logo in the lower right corner. It's a tidy arrangement with only a few icons on the desktop, three icons in the quick launcher, and we had five icons in the system tray. The applets in the system tray consist of Klipper, Kalendar, Kmix, Network Manager, and for me a battery monitor.

The quick launchers include Show Desktop, System Menu, and Konqueror. The window decoration used is Crystal and the style is Lipstik. All together we have a pretty and tidy desktop. Primarily KDE applications occupy the menu, but there are a few other entries such as the tools in the Settings menu and whatever extra components chosen during install. There seemed to be a bit of lag in the menu operation sometimes, but most applications opened in average or above average time.

Some of the applications found include Kcalc, Kate, KSpaceDuel, Kview, Kopete, Kontact, Amarok and Kaffeine. The Firefox version available for easy installation is 2.0.0.6, Opera 9.23 is available, and the OpenOffice.org version is 2.2.1. Under the hood we find X.Org 7.2 and GCC 3.4.6. As shipped, PC-BSD multimedia support is very good.
We could watch Google videos, Apple Quicktime trailers, and other Flash movies, although streaming DIVX didn't work. We could enjoy various file formats stored locally such as .avi, .bins, .mp3s, and .mp4s, as well as watch encrypted DVDs and listen to audio CDs.

Btw, you can try this release by download it here.