 | |
 Lumina desktop running on TrueOS | |
| Developer | iXsystems |
|---|---|
| OS family | Unix-like |
| Working state | Discontinued |
| Source model | Open source |
| Initial release | 2006; 19 years ago (2006) |
| Latest release |
|
| Package manager |
|
| Platforms | |
| Kernel type | Monolithic (FreeBSD) |
| Default user interface | Lumina |
| License | BSD |
| Official website | trueos |
TrueOS (formerlyPC-BSD orPCBSD) is a discontinued[3]Unix-like, server-orientedoperating system built upon the most recent releases ofFreeBSD-CURRENT.[4]
Up to 2018 it aimed to be easy to install by using a graphical installation program, and easy and ready-to-use immediately by providingKDE SC,Lumina,LXDE,MATE, orXfce[5] as thedesktop environment. In June 2018 the developers announced that since TrueOS had become the core OS to provide a basis for other projects, the graphical installer had been removed.[6] Graphical end-user-oriented OSes formerly based on TrueOS wereGhostBSD and Trident.[7] TrueOS provided official binaryNvidia andIntel drivers for hardware acceleration and an optional 3D desktop interface throughKWin, andWine is ready-to-use for runningMicrosoft Windows software. TrueOS was also able to run Linux software[8] in addition toFreeBSD Ports collection and it had its own.txzpackage manager. TrueOS supportedOpenZFS and the installer offereddisk encryption withgeli.
Development of TrueOS ended in 2020.[3]
TrueOS was founded by FreeBSD professional Kris Moore in early 2005 as PC-BSD. In August 2006 it was voted the most beginner-friendly operating system by OSWeekly.com.[9]
The first beta of the PC-BSD consisted of only a GUI installer to get the user up and running with a FreeBSD 6 system with KDE3 pre-configured. This was a major innovation for the time as anyone wishing to install FreeBSD would have to manually tweak and run through a text installer. Kris Moore's goal was to make FreeBSD easy for everyone to use on the desktop and has since diverged even more in the direction of usability by including additional GUI administration tools and .pbi application installers. PC-BSD's application installer management involved a different approach to installing software than many otherUnix-like operating systems, up to and including version 8.2, by means of the pbiDIR website.[10] Instead of using theFreeBSD Ports tree directly (although it remained available), PC-BSD used files with the.pbifilename extension (Push Button Installer) which, when double-clicked, brought up an installationwizard program. An autobuild system tracked the FreeBSD ports collection and generated new .pbi files daily. All software packages and dependencies were installed from inside of the .pbi files into their own self-contained directories in/Programs. This convention was aimed to decrease confusion about where binary programs reside, and to remove the possibility of a package breaking if system libraries are upgraded or changed, and to preventdependency hell.
On October 10, 2006, PC-BSD was acquired by enterprise hardware provideriXsystems.[11][12] iXsystems employed Kris Moore as a full-time developer and leader of the project. In November 2007, iXsystems entered into a distribution agreement withFry's Electronics whereby Fry's Electronics stores nationwide carry boxed copies of PC-BSD version 1.4 (Da Vinci Edition).[13] In January 2008, iXsystems entered into a similar agreement withMicro Center.[14]
On September 1, 2016, the PC-BSD team announced that the name of the operating system would change to TrueOS.[4] Along with the rebranding, the project also became a rolling release distribution, based on the FreeBSD-CURRENT branch.[15]
On November 15, 2016, TrueOS began the transition from FreeBSD's rc.d toOpenRC as the default init system. Apart fromGentoo/Alt, where OpenRC was initially developed, this is the only other major BSD based operating system using OpenRC.
In July 2018, TrueOS announced that they would spin off the desktop edition into a separate project namedProject Trident.[16][17]
Development of TrueOS ended in 2020 and the developers recommended users move to other BSD-based operating systems.[3]
| Version | Release date | FreeBSD codebase |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0[18] | April 29, 2006 | 6.0 |
| 1.1 | May 29, 2006 | 6.1 |
| 1.2 | July 12, 2006 | 6.1 |
| 1.3[19] | December 31, 2006 | 6.1 |
| 1.4[20] | September 24, 2007 | 6.2-STABLE |
| 1.4.1.x | Various | 6.3-PRERELEASE |
| 1.5[21] | March 12, 2008 | 6.3-STABLE |
| 1.5.1 | April 23, 2008 | 6.3-STABLE |
| 7.0[22] | September 16, 2008 | 7.0-STABLE |
| 7.0.1 | October 17, 2008 | 7.0-STABLE |
| 7.0.2 | December 10, 2008 | 7.1-PRERELEASE |
| 7.1[23][24] | April 10, 2009 | 7.2-PRERELEASE |
| 7.1.1 | July 6, 2009 | 7.2-STABLE |
| 8.0[25][26] | February 23, 2010 | 8.0-RELEASE-P2 |
| 8.1[27] | July 21, 2010 | 8.1-RELEASE |
| 8.2[28] | February 24, 2011 | 8.2 |
| 9.0[29][30] | January 13, 2012 | 9.0[31] |
| 9.1[32] | December 18, 2012 | 9.1[33] |
| 9.2[34] | October 7, 2013 | 9.2-CURRENT[35] |
| 10.0[36][37] | January 29, 2014 | 10.0[38] |
| 10.1[39] | November 14, 2014 | 10.1[40] |
| 10.2 | August 21, 2015 | 10.2[41] |
| 10.3 | April 4, 2016 | 10.3[42] |
| TrueOS 11.0 | September 1, 2016 | FreeBSD-CURRENT[4] |
| TrueOS 2017-02-22[43][44] | February 22, 2017 | FreeBSD-CURRENT |
| TrueOS 2017-06-01[45] | June 2, 2017 | FreeBSD-CURRENT |
| TrueOS 17.12[46] | December 14, 2017 | FreeBSD-CURRENT |
| TrueOS 18.03[1][47] | March 30, 2018 | FreeBSD-CURRENT |
Since version 7, PC-BSD began following the same numbering system asFreeBSD.
Since version 9.0, theKDE SC, customized to support tighter application integration and the .txz package management system, was no longer the onlydesktop environment supported by PC-BSD. While manual installation of other desktops such asXfce andGNOME had been technically possible in earlier releases, none of these were supported in the earlier versions, and major functionality was lost when not using PC-BSD's special build of KDE SC.[48] Starting with version 9.0, PC-BSD added other desktop environments, including GNOME, Xfce,LXDE, andMATE.
PC-BSD used to support bothamd64 andi686 architectures. Support for i686 was dropped in version 9.2.[49][50]
Starting in September 2016 with the rebranding of PC-BSD, TrueOS became a rolling release distribution based on FreeBSD's current branch.[4][15]
TrueOS'spackage manager takes a similar approach to installing software to many otherUnix-like operating systems. Instead of using theFreeBSD Ports tree directly (although it remains available), TrueOS uses files with the.txzfilename extension packages which contain compiled ports. An autobuild system tracked the FreeBSD ports collection and generated new .txz files daily.
The TrueOS package management system aims to be visually similar to that of major operating systems such asMicrosoft Windows andApplemacOS, where applications are installed from a single download link with graphical prompts, while maintaining internally the traditional .txz package management systems that many Unix-like systems use.[51] The TrueOS package manager also takes care of creating categorized links in the KDE menu and on the KDE SC desktop.
In 2014, the PC-BSD project announced its development of a newdesktop environment, from scratch, namedLumina. Ken Moore is the main developer of Lumina, which is based on theQt toolkit.[52]
As of July 2016, Lumina has its own web site.[53]
The desktop environment is not an application development toolkit, and aims to be a graphical interface that only uses plugins for customization.[54]
TrueOS was originally licensed under theGNU General Public License (GPL) because the developers were under the impression that applications using theQt, which TrueOS uses for its interface development, must be licensed under the GPL or theQ Public License. Upon discovering that there was, in fact, no such restriction, the TrueOS developers laterrelicensed the code under a BSD-like 3-clause license.[55]
TrueOS and the TrueOS logo are registeredtrademarks of iXsystems Inc.[56]
The New York City *BSD User Group runs a service named dmesgd,[57] which provides user-submitteddmesg information for different computer hardware (laptops,workstations,single-board computers,embedded systems,virtual machines, etc.) capable of running TrueOS.
According to the TrueOS wiki,[58] TrueOS has the following hardware requirements:
UEFI support (foramd64 only) has been added to the installer and the boot manager since version 10.1 with the default EFI boot manager to berEFInd.[59] This includesACPI detection and setup of Root System Description Pointer (RSDP),[60] eXtended System Descriptor Table (XSDT),[61] and Root System Description Table (RSDT)[62] pass-through values to thekernel. A new installation is needed in order to install UEFI support as it requires the creation of a smallFAT partition. The current UEFI does not support secure boot.
TrueOS and the TrueOS logo are registered trademarks of iXsystems.
