 Visitor Reviews |
DragonFly BSD
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Reader supplied reviews for DragonFly BSD
Average rating
7.2 from 9 review(s)
Version: 6.4.0
Rating: 5
Date: 2023-12-22
Votes: 0
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As a project, I wanted to try something different. Above all, I was curious as to the Hammer2 system, and also towards the supposedly fast speed of the Dragonfly OS.
But... I never got near installing it. The text on their site says "[...] If you use a USB .img file, it needs to be copied to a USB key directly. Use dd on unix-like systems [...]" And so I did. Bunzipped the image file, used dd to write it on a 1.7 giga usb stick. It did not boot.
Retried, this time using MX's GUI usb creator tool. Destination, the 1.7 G usb stick on /dev/sda, pointed the input to the dfly-x86_64-6.4.0_REL.img file on my hdd and... the usb tool stopped with "an encountered error".
So I left it with that. It sounds all interesting, but I got beached at the very simple task of creating the boot-usb.
Conclusion: this one is above my pay-grade, I'll keep an eye on it but will leave it to more skilled people to try it out. For myself, I will continue my experimentation with FreeBSD for now.
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Version: 6.4.0
Rating: 9
Date: 2023-10-21
Votes: 62
|
An excellent BSD system, but obviously it's not meant to be a replacement for Windows or Ubuntu. Some people should just stick with those operating systems if they can't manage a BSD. I use and prefer NetBSD myself, but I'm happy to acknowledge the distinguishing features of other BSDs. In the case of DragonFly BSD, the main selling point might be the Hammer file system, which is now at Hammer2. The project has also introduced the hypervisor NVVM, formerly developed on NetBSD. This had some excellent security advantages over, say, KVM on Linux, but unfortunately the main developer is prone to go missing. All in all, however, DragonFly BSD is a promising project, and one that I keep my eye on, even if I don't (yet?) use it as a desktop or server.
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Version: 6.2.2
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-08-11
Votes: 0
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1) No GUI Live CD/DVD, to start with. (There's been back then, in the times of version 3.0...)
2) Non-intuitive text-mode Live USB. (You cannot write the ISO file on a USB stick with e.g. Rufus, you need the IMG file!)
3) Very non-intuitive hard disk notations, e.g. ad14. When the Dell Precision T3500 BIOS can name them Intel0 (RAID 1 storage), WDC160... (Western Digital 160 GB), etc. (also a 2-TB Seagate drive), why DragonFly BSD can't be at least that user-friendly?!!
4) I formatted the Western Digital 160 GB from within the Disk Tools of DragonFly BSD. However, the damn thing also wrote a GRUB on my main storage with a fresh Windows 10 installation, the Intel0 (RAID 1). After I restarted and removed the DragonFly BSD USB stick, Windows won't boot (I am left with a GRUB Rescue session). Moreover, the Windows 10 installer USB now complains that there is a missing media driver (supposedly of the Intel's RAID-capable chipset), and won't continue. It won't do any Repair of the Startup issue, because it cannot find the existing Windows 10 installation. (But it reads all the drives and their folder structure, although with some arbitrary drive letters, e.g. X: (Boot).)
Conclusion: Immature, no GUI Live medium nor installer, and it breaks other things.
Recommendation: Stay away (unless you are The Skynet and know what you are doing)!...
The worst distro that I've ever tried from DistroWatch, by the way!...
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Version: 6.2.1
Rating: 7
Date: 2022-02-21
Votes: 14
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I apologize in advance for my English, I'm from Eastern Europe and this language is almost never used here, like the BSD system in general, except for MacOS of course. I have been a Debian user for over 10 years now, all servers and home workstations have always been running Debian. But sometimes I also use BSD systems, and lately they have been of interest to me. DragonflyBSD looks like a very interesting alternative to Free/Open/Net, with very promising features of its Hammer file system (especially in my case after my experience with OpenBSD, although it has its advantages. I decided to try DragonflyBSD as a desktop for everyday use and I was surprised, but also very disappointed.I usually use KDE Plasma with the presence of all its original components.And what a disappointment that the current version contains a broken SDDM login manager.It was very sad to find out that the packages received into the system are not tested and do not pass any tests , this is a very bad sign and any trust in everything else disappears, just as it turned out on the example of a recent sitation with wireguard in FreeBSD :( But I still recommend trying it at least as a file server (NFS, Samba, sftp, etc Especially its alternative to the usual sofware raid implementation will surprise you greatly DragonflyBSD is a very fast system, with quite fast burst manager, especially if you switch the repository to the mirror closest to you - it will be very good. There are downsides, like many other operating systems and distributions. Just don't try to use it on a KDE Plasma desktop :)
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Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-28
Votes: 52
|
Dragonfly BSD is great to use- it’s more stable, easier to use and play around with, looks & functions better and recognizes all of my hardware so I can use this right out of the box, OpenBSD is none of that though, so I recommend Dragonfly BSD.
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Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-24
Votes: 77
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A great FreeBSD -based OS. Stable, fast, no bloatware. It just works.
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Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-22
Votes: 37
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Great, easy-to-use FreeBSD-based OS. No crashes. OS is speedy and replies to opening applications in a quick manner. Easy to install a GUI.
|
Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-09
Votes: 61
|
Dragonfly takes a different and interesting take on BSD. I like that it doesn’t come with pre-installed applications, so you can choose everything you want to install without worry of any bloatware and other applications you don’t want. There are a lot of desktop environments to choose from. I like the Cinnamon and KDE desktop environments, so I have more experience using them than the other desktop environments. Cinnamon and KDE have been pretty stable, look good, work well and have a lot of extra repositories you can enable. There are aso the websites “Cinnamon Look” and “KDE Look” where they have a ton of packages for day-to-day use, themes, etc.
I use Dragonfly as a desktop OS and it overall works well for me.
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Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 3
Date: 2021-05-16
Votes: 0
|
Running "live" from USB. Boot menu flashes faster than one can read, let alone make an informed decision. Need to give us a few seconds at the start with keystrokes to navigate the menu. As a newbie, I dread mistakenly starting an unintentional install.
After "login" as root, the command line pops up as expected. Documentation does not state any command (like "startx") to launch DragonFlyBSD. FreeBSD documentation not any help either. Pressing "Tab" key did not show command words. I tried adding a "user", but could not get past the "which group?' query.
Unknown start command and unknown "group" blocked me from this distro. Sad, because it looks like a lot of work will not get out into the "distro hopping" world.
Am writing this from a live USB version of NomadBSD
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Latest Reviews
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.4.0
Rating: 5
Date: 2023-12-22
Votes: 0
|
As a project, I wanted to try something different. Above all, I was curious as to the Hammer2 system, and also towards the supposedly fast speed of the Dragonfly OS.
But... I never got near installing it. The text on their site says "[...] If you use a USB .img file, it needs to be copied to a USB key directly. Use dd on unix-like systems [...]" And so I did. Bunzipped the image file, used dd to write it on a 1.7 giga usb stick. It did not boot.
Retried, this time using MX's GUI usb creator tool. Destination, the 1.7 G usb stick on /dev/sda, pointed the input to the dfly-x86_64-6.4.0_REL.img file on my hdd and... the usb tool stopped with "an encountered error".
So I left it with that. It sounds all interesting, but I got beached at the very simple task of creating the boot-usb.
Conclusion: this one is above my pay-grade, I'll keep an eye on it but will leave it to more skilled people to try it out. For myself, I will continue my experimentation with FreeBSD for now.
|
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.4.0
Rating: 9
Date: 2023-10-21
Votes: 62
|
An excellent BSD system, but obviously it's not meant to be a replacement for Windows or Ubuntu. Some people should just stick with those operating systems if they can't manage a BSD. I use and prefer NetBSD myself, but I'm happy to acknowledge the distinguishing features of other BSDs. In the case of DragonFly BSD, the main selling point might be the Hammer file system, which is now at Hammer2. The project has also introduced the hypervisor NVVM, formerly developed on NetBSD. This had some excellent security advantages over, say, KVM on Linux, but unfortunately the main developer is prone to go missing. All in all, however, DragonFly BSD is a promising project, and one that I keep my eye on, even if I don't (yet?) use it as a desktop or server.
|
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.2.2
Rating: 1
Date: 2022-08-11
Votes: 0
|
1) No GUI Live CD/DVD, to start with. (There's been back then, in the times of version 3.0...)
2) Non-intuitive text-mode Live USB. (You cannot write the ISO file on a USB stick with e.g. Rufus, you need the IMG file!)
3) Very non-intuitive hard disk notations, e.g. ad14. When the Dell Precision T3500 BIOS can name them Intel0 (RAID 1 storage), WDC160... (Western Digital 160 GB), etc. (also a 2-TB Seagate drive), why DragonFly BSD can't be at least that user-friendly?!!
4) I formatted the Western Digital 160 GB from within the Disk Tools of DragonFly BSD. However, the damn thing also wrote a GRUB on my main storage with a fresh Windows 10 installation, the Intel0 (RAID 1). After I restarted and removed the DragonFly BSD USB stick, Windows won't boot (I am left with a GRUB Rescue session). Moreover, the Windows 10 installer USB now complains that there is a missing media driver (supposedly of the Intel's RAID-capable chipset), and won't continue. It won't do any Repair of the Startup issue, because it cannot find the existing Windows 10 installation. (But it reads all the drives and their folder structure, although with some arbitrary drive letters, e.g. X: (Boot).)
Conclusion: Immature, no GUI Live medium nor installer, and it breaks other things.
Recommendation: Stay away (unless you are The Skynet and know what you are doing)!...
The worst distro that I've ever tried from DistroWatch, by the way!...
|
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.2.1
Rating: 7
Date: 2022-02-21
Votes: 14
|
I apologize in advance for my English, I'm from Eastern Europe and this language is almost never used here, like the BSD system in general, except for MacOS of course. I have been a Debian user for over 10 years now, all servers and home workstations have always been running Debian. But sometimes I also use BSD systems, and lately they have been of interest to me. DragonflyBSD looks like a very interesting alternative to Free/Open/Net, with very promising features of its Hammer file system (especially in my case after my experience with OpenBSD, although it has its advantages. I decided to try DragonflyBSD as a desktop for everyday use and I was surprised, but also very disappointed.I usually use KDE Plasma with the presence of all its original components.And what a disappointment that the current version contains a broken SDDM login manager.It was very sad to find out that the packages received into the system are not tested and do not pass any tests , this is a very bad sign and any trust in everything else disappears, just as it turned out on the example of a recent sitation with wireguard in FreeBSD :( But I still recommend trying it at least as a file server (NFS, Samba, sftp, etc Especially its alternative to the usual sofware raid implementation will surprise you greatly DragonflyBSD is a very fast system, with quite fast burst manager, especially if you switch the repository to the mirror closest to you - it will be very good. There are downsides, like many other operating systems and distributions. Just don't try to use it on a KDE Plasma desktop :)
|
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-28
Votes: 52
|
Dragonfly BSD is great to use- it’s more stable, easier to use and play around with, looks & functions better and recognizes all of my hardware so I can use this right out of the box, OpenBSD is none of that though, so I recommend Dragonfly BSD.
|
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-24
Votes: 77
|
A great FreeBSD -based OS. Stable, fast, no bloatware. It just works.
|
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-22
Votes: 37
|
Great, easy-to-use FreeBSD-based OS. No crashes. OS is speedy and replies to opening applications in a quick manner. Easy to install a GUI.
|
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 10
Date: 2021-11-09
Votes: 61
|
Dragonfly takes a different and interesting take on BSD. I like that it doesn’t come with pre-installed applications, so you can choose everything you want to install without worry of any bloatware and other applications you don’t want. There are a lot of desktop environments to choose from. I like the Cinnamon and KDE desktop environments, so I have more experience using them than the other desktop environments. Cinnamon and KDE have been pretty stable, look good, work well and have a lot of extra repositories you can enable. There are aso the websites “Cinnamon Look” and “KDE Look” where they have a ton of packages for day-to-day use, themes, etc.
I use Dragonfly as a desktop OS and it overall works well for me.
|
Project: DragonFly BSD
Version: 6.0.0
Rating: 3
Date: 2021-05-16
Votes: 0
|
Running "live" from USB. Boot menu flashes faster than one can read, let alone make an informed decision. Need to give us a few seconds at the start with keystrokes to navigate the menu. As a newbie, I dread mistakenly starting an unintentional install.
After "login" as root, the command line pops up as expected. Documentation does not state any command (like "startx") to launch DragonFlyBSD. FreeBSD documentation not any help either. Pressing "Tab" key did not show command words. I tried adding a "user", but could not get past the "which group?' query.
Unknown start command and unknown "group" blocked me from this distro. Sad, because it looks like a lot of work will not get out into the "distro hopping" world.
Am writing this from a live USB version of NomadBSD
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