GhostBSD

Reader supplied reviews for GhostBSD Average rating 7.4 from 58 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please select a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on GhostBSD? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 25.0224.10.123.10.122.06.1521.11.2420.11.2819.1018.1211.110.310.14.03.53.12.52.01.51.0 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 25.02 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-09-12 Votes: 26 I keep coming back to GhostBSD, largely because of the possibilities. It appears that those possibilities have been advanced and come to fruition with this latest release. I'm testing GhostBSD 25.02 on an Acer Aspire A-617-52 with Intel CPU and integrated GPU. My Broadcom wireless now works out of the box, as does my Tigerlake audio and Pulse Audio. All hardware, including my Epson ET-2650 printer/scanner/copier works as they should. I tested the live DVD first and set up wireless and other parameters on the desktop and they were remembered when I installed the OS to NVME SSD, looking great and ready to go. I used to test GhostBSD on a partition on this machine, alongside Windows 10 (and then 11) and a few Linux distros. This time I took the plunge and gave GhostBSD the whole disc; this laptop is now a BSD laptop and I'll be using it for everything. 10 rating is earned! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 25.02 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-09-01 Votes: 18 Version to version, GhostBSD just keeps getting better, providing a great alternative to desktop Linux. Based on FreeBSD 14.3, I just upgraded from the previous version. While I needed to heed the instructions to update the Intel wifi firmware (iwlwifi users: Install wifi-firmware-iwlwifi-kmod or use sudo fwget before upgrading to 25.02-R14.3p2 (firmware moved to ports in FreeBSD 14.3), everything went incredibly smoothly. Having recently made the decision to move from Linux to BSD, I have been nothing but impressed by the efforts of Eric and the GhostBSD team to create a great FreeBSD desktop experience. Even the touch screen on my Panasonic Let's Note CF-MX5 works, in addition to all the usual stuff (audio, video, suspend/resume, touchpad, etc.)! My initial success with GhostBSD has led me to investigate moving the rest of my systems to a mix of GhostBSD, FreeBSD proper, and NetBSD. The results so far have been very successful, leaving me wondering why I haven't considered such a move before. The BSDs provide holistically designed operating systems that adhere to UNIX principles (being direct descendants), whereas Linux seems to be going the way of M$ Windows, or a patchwork quilt. Everything in it's time, I suppose. "If 386BSD had been available before I created Linux, then Linux might not have been born." ~Linus Torvalds Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 25.01 Rating: 9 Date: 2025-08-20 Votes: 26 I left Linux behind and use GhostBSD for 2 years now and installed it recently on my Thinkpad T470p. The installation from an external SSD to the internal SSD was done in a few minutes and very easy. But caution, GhostBSD will only install on the internal device. There is no choice to install onto an external device. For me that doesn't matter. Nearly everything works out of the box. Wi-Fi, sound and sound adjustment with Fn-keys works. I don't know if Bluetooth works as well. I don't use Bluetooth. The brightness cannot be adjusted with Fn-keys. I use the app "Gammy" to solve that. It is similar to "Redshift". Perhaps I will find a way to fix that. I use my Thinkpad also outside in the garden with the implemented battery. The Mate-Desktop with some apps runs smoothly and the battery runs long time and will last for several hours. The battery in my Thinkpad is new with 10 charging cycles. I tested it 4 hours using Firefox and also playing some podcasts. After this test the battery was half empty. So the Mate-Desktop needs only less resources which is good for this older laptop. Because GhostBSD comes from FreeBSD there are tons of packages or apps to install and try out. Most of the time I work online with Evolution (Mail/Calendar/Tasks/Contacts) and Firefox. That fit my needs. I'm a longtime user of Firefox and don't need a Google-browser. But if one likes to use Chromium or Brave, this can be installed easily about an internal minimal Linux environment. Just click in the Software-Station on the wanted browser and GhostBSD does all needed steps automatically. Well done. The whole process to search and install system and package updates is done with a Gui, the Update-Station. One click on "Update" and GhostBSD does it for you. Perhaps a reboot and one has a fresh and updated system. GhostBSD has a slow rolling release and the Update-Station does all with one click. If something with the updated packages goes wrong, the whole system can be rolled back to a former working state. The ZFS filesystem is rock solid and supports roll backs. Just start the Backup-Station and rollback with one click again. If the desktop does not work, this can be done on the TTY also. I'm very happy with GhostBSD and it is for me "the BSD" for Desktops and Laptops. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 58 reader reviews of GhostBSD...