This is PC-BSD 10, the open-source freeware one-size-fits-all Operating System which very possibly is "the wave of the future" in computer O/Ses, for a number of reasons. It's very well equipped, has plenty of choices of programs you can add into it, and one nice thing about that is, you choose them from a list of categories, and when you pick one and select it, it is both downloaded and installed for you, without you needing to click or coax anything to happen. As they say, "It just works!" - And fellow Window-watchers, you too could get to like that - a lot!
It isn't perfect of course, (what is?) - but it's a hell of a nice system for the price, and I'm impressed with how well-thought-out it is, and how well everything comes together in it. I've had a little trouble this past week, trying to get the right screen resolution set in it, but that's not the program's fault. It runs fine on my other PC, with the correct resolution and all. This problem's with this particular PC and its graphics card. It's an Nvidia card with the latest driver installed, and I'm told this operating system was made with Nvidia graphics in mind.... but maybe not in the same sense as I thought, because the Nvidia card inside this box won't display the operating system's Nvidia driver in the correct native resolution for this display. And just to clarify, this is the exact same make and model of display as my other PC on which this same O/S is very well-behaved, using an ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card.
But you probably didn't want to know all that, so let me only say I'm glad I got this going on the second of my two PCs. Now I can finish trimming it up with its various programs to get it customized to my liking. The nice part of which is that I don't have to surf the world to possibly questionable websites to get the various goodies I want to equip it. Those are all on lists in each of several categories already selected and in many cases custom-made for this system.
So you don't have to try to fit Ford parts into your Dodge or Chevy.... the stuff you pick from has already been tested for working with this system. In that sense, it's much like Apple's OS-X. In fact, they both have the same parent, the Unix system from which most other computer programs have been derived.
Adapting a nice smooth-running graphical user interface to a text-based O/S has had its challenges, but the results speak for themselves, and this is just as nice graphically speaking as its more expensive competitors. It gets the job done just as well, and you can still afford a nice lunch afterward with the money you saved by using it. It's definitely worth checking out, for sure. If Apple and Microsoft should ever happen to kill each other off, we won't be stuck. And we won't be feeling deprived either!
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