TrueOS

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Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system

title: "TrueOS" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["2006-software", "freebsd", "linux-distributions-offering-kde-desktop-environment", "discontinued_operating_systems", "software-using-the-bsd-license"] description: "Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system" topic_path: "technology/operating-systems" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueOS" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Unix-like, desktop-oriented operating system ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox OS"]

FieldValue
nameTrueOS
logoTrueOS logo.png
screenshotLumina1.0.0-TrueOS.png
captionLumina desktop running on TrueOS
developeriXsystems
familyUnix-like
working stateDiscontinued
source modelOpen source
released
** 18.12<ref name"lastrelease" / /
kernel typeMonolithic (FreeBSD)
uiLumina
licenseBSD
website
authorKris Moore, Ken Moore, Joe Maloney
::

|name = TrueOS |logo = TrueOS logo.png |screenshot = Lumina1.0.0-TrueOS.png |caption = Lumina desktop running on TrueOS |developer = iXsystems |family = Unix-like |working state = Discontinued |source model = Open source |released = |latest release version =

TrueOS (formerly PC-BSD or PCBSD) is a discontinued Unix-like, server-oriented operating system built upon the most recent releases of FreeBSD-CURRENT.

Up to 2018 it aimed to be easy to install by using a graphical installation program, and easy and ready-to-use immediately by providing KDE SC, Lumina, LXDE, MATE, or Xfce as the desktop 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. Graphical end-user-oriented OSes formerly based on TrueOS were GhostBSD and Trident. TrueOS provided official binary Nvidia and Intel drivers for hardware acceleration and an optional 3D desktop interface through KWin, and Wine is ready-to-use for running Microsoft Windows software. TrueOS was also able to run Linux software in addition to FreeBSD Ports collection and it had its own .txz package manager. TrueOS supported OpenZFS and the installer offered disk encryption with geli.

Development of TrueOS ended in 2020.

History

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.

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 other Unix-like operating systems, up to and including version 8.2, by means of the pbiDIR website. Instead of using the FreeBSD Ports tree directly (although it remained available), PC-BSD used files with the .pbi filename extension (Push Button Installer) which, when double-clicked, brought up an installation wizard 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 prevent dependency hell.

On October 10, 2006, PC-BSD was acquired by enterprise hardware provider iXsystems. iXsystems employed Kris Moore as a full-time developer and leader of the project. In November 2007, iXsystems entered into a distribution agreement with Fry's Electronics whereby Fry's Electronics stores nationwide carry boxed copies of PC-BSD version 1.4 (Da Vinci Edition). In January 2008, iXsystems entered into a similar agreement with Micro Center.

On September 1, 2016, the PC-BSD team announced that the name of the operating system would change to TrueOS. Along with the rebranding, the project also became a rolling release distribution, based on the FreeBSD-CURRENT branch.

On November 15, 2016, TrueOS began the transition from FreeBSD's rc.d to OpenRC as the default init system. Apart from Gentoo/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 named Project Trident.

Development of TrueOS ended in 2020 and the developers recommended users move to other BSD-based operating systems.

Release history

Define $dx = 25 # shift text to right side of bar Define $dy = -3 # shift text to right side of bar Define $now = 31/12/2016 Define $start = 29/04/2006 ImageSize = width:160 height:720 PlotArea = width:50 height:700 left:50 bottom:10 DateFormat = dd/mm/yyyy Period = from:$start till:$now TimeAxis = orientation:vertical ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:1 start:2007

PlotData= bar:Leaders color:red width:26 mark:(line,white) align:left fontsize:S

from:29/04/2006 till:$now

from:29/04/2006 till:29/04/2006 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:1.0 from:29/05/2006 till:29/05/2006 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:1.1 from:12/07/2006 till:12/07/2006 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:1.2 from:31/12/2006 till:31/12/2006 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:1.3 from:24/09/2007 till:24/09/2007 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:1.4 from:12/03/2008 till:12/03/2008 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:1.5 from:23/04/2008 till:23/04/2008 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:1.5.1 from:19/09/2008 till:19/09/2008 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:7.0 from:17/10/2008 till:17/10/2008 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:7.0.1 from:10/12/2008 till:10/12/2008 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:7.0.2 from:10/04/2009 till:10/04/2009 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:7.1 from:06/07/2009 till:06/07/2009 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:7.1.1 from:23/02/2010 till:23/02/2010 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:8.0 from:21/07/2010 till:21/07/2010 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:8.1 from:24/02/2011 till:24/02/2011 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:8.2 from:13/01/2012 till:13/01/2012 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:9.0 from:18/12/2012 till:18/12/2012 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:9.1 from:07/10/2013 till:07/10/2013 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:9.2 from:29/01/2014 till:29/01/2014 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:10.0 from:14/11/2014 till:14/11/2014 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:10.1 from:21/08/2015 till:21/08/2015 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:10.2 from:04/04/2016 till:04/04/2016 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:10.3 from:01/09/2016 till:01/09/2016 shift:($dx,$dy) fontsize:XS text:TrueOS ::data[format=table]

VersionRelease dateFreeBSD codebase
1.0April 29, 20066.0
1.1May 29, 20066.1
1.2July 12, 20066.1
1.3December 31, 20066.1
1.4September 24, 20076.2-STABLE
1.4.1.xVarious6.3-PRERELEASE
1.5March 12, 20086.3-STABLE
1.5.1April 23, 20086.3-STABLE
7.0September 16, 20087.0-STABLE
7.0.1October 17, 20087.0-STABLE
7.0.2December 10, 20087.1-PRERELEASE
7.1April 10, 20097.2-PRERELEASE
7.1.1July 6, 20097.2-STABLE
LinuxBSDos.com]February 23, 20108.0-RELEASE-P2
8.1July 21, 20108.1-RELEASE
8.2February 24, 20118.2
9.0January 13, 20129.0
9.1December 18, 20129.1
9.2October 7, 20139.2-CURRENT
10.0January 29, 201410.0
10.1November 14, 201410.1
10.2August 21, 201510.2
10.3April 4, 201610.3
TrueOS 11.0September 1, 2016FreeBSD-CURRENT
TrueOS 2017-02-22February 22, 2017FreeBSD-CURRENT
TrueOS 2017-06-01June 2, 2017FreeBSD-CURRENT
TrueOS 17.12December 14, 2017FreeBSD-CURRENT
TrueOS 18.03March 30, 2018FreeBSD-CURRENT
::

Since version 7, PC-BSD began following the same numbering system as FreeBSD.

Since version 9.0, the KDE SC, customized to support tighter application integration and the .txz package management system, was no longer the only desktop environment supported by PC-BSD. While manual installation of other desktops such as Xfce and GNOME 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. Starting with version 9.0, PC-BSD added other desktop environments, including GNOME, Xfce, LXDE, and MATE.

PC-BSD used to support both amd64 and i686 architectures. Support for i686 was dropped in version 9.2.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/No_carrier_PC-BSD.png" caption="cable]] plugged in (hence: "no carrier")."] ::

Starting in September 2016 with the rebranding of PC-BSD, TrueOS became a rolling release distribution based on FreeBSD's current branch.

Package management

TrueOS's package manager takes a similar approach to installing software to many other Unix-like operating systems. Instead of using the FreeBSD Ports tree directly (although it remains available), TrueOS uses files with the .txz filename 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 as Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, 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. The TrueOS package manager also takes care of creating categorized links in the KDE menu and on the KDE SC desktop.

Lumina Desktop

In 2014, the PC-BSD project announced its development of a new desktop environment, from scratch, named Lumina. Ken Moore is the main developer of Lumina, which is based on the Qt toolkit.

As of July 2016, Lumina has its own web site.

The desktop environment is not an application development toolkit, and aims to be a graphical interface that only uses plugins for customization.

License

TrueOS was originally licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) because the developers were under the impression that applications using the Qt, which TrueOS uses for its interface development, must be licensed under the GPL or the Q Public License. Upon discovering that there was, in fact, no such restriction, the TrueOS developers later relicensed the code under a BSD-like 3-clause license.

TrueOS and the TrueOS logo are registered trademarks of iXsystems Inc.

Hardware requirements

The New York City *BSD User Group runs a service named dmesgd, which provides user-submitted dmesg information for different computer hardware (laptops, workstations, single-board computers, embedded systems, virtual machines, etc.) capable of running TrueOS.

According to the TrueOS wiki, TrueOS has the following hardware requirements:

Minimum

Recommended

UEFI

UEFI support (for amd64 only) has been added to the installer and the boot manager since version 10.1 with the default EFI boot manager to be rEFInd. This includes ACPI detection and setup of Root System Description Pointer (RSDP), eXtended System Descriptor Table (XSDT), and Root System Description Table (RSDT) pass-through values to the kernel. A new installation is needed in order to install UEFI support as it requires the creation of a small FAT partition. The current UEFI does not support secure boot.

Gallery

File:PC-BSD 10.1.2 MATE Screenshot.png|Screenshot of a PC-BSD 10.1.2 desktop (MATE) with dual monitor (dual head, pivot). The running free and open-source (FOSS) programs are: GIMP, OpenShot, file manager, Eric Python development IDE. Also shown: Minecraft 1.8.7 (with "Forge" mods).

Notes

References

  • {{cite news |date = October 12, 2006 |title = FreeBSD based PC-BSD Gets 'Acquired' |publisher = internetnews.com |author = Kerner, Sean Michael |url = http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3637341
  • {{cite news |date = January 2, 2007 |title = New Year, New Look For PC-BSD |publisher = internetnews.com |author = Kerner, Sean Michael |url = http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3651641
  • {{cite news |date = March 25, 2017 |title = A Penguin tries out TrueOS, formerly PC-BSD |publisher = osEmotions.com |author = Marco Buratto |url = http://www.osemotions.com/a-penguin-tries-out-trueos-formerly-pc-bsd/ |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180516064505/http://www.osemotions.com/a-penguin-tries-out-trueos-formerly-pc-bsd/ |url-status = dead |archive-date = May 16, 2018

References

  1. "Our Team". TrueOS Project and iXsystems.
  2. "TrueOS Discontinuation". TrueOS.
  3. Smith, Josh. (1 September 2016). "PC-BSD Evolves into TrueOS {{!}} TrueOS". TrueOS Project and iXsystems.
  4. "System Selection Screen/10.0 - PC-BSD Wiki". pcbsd.org.
  5. "TrueOS to Focus on Core Operating System". www.trueos.org.
  6. (2019-10-19). "Project Trident Ditches BSD for Linux".
  7. "Chapter 11. Linux Binary Compatibility". freebsd.org.
  8. "The Most Beginner Friendly OS".
  9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130327233344/http://www.pbidir.com/ pbiDIR]
  10. "iXsystems Announces Acquisition of PC-BSD Operating System". iXsystems.com.
  11. Mayank Sharma. (2006-10-13). "Why iXsystems bought PC-BSD". linux.com.
  12. "iXsystems Announces Distribution Agreement with Fry's Electronics".
  13. "iXsystems Announces Distribution Agreement with Micro Center for PC-BSD".
  14. (2 September 2016). "PC-BSD Follows a Rolling Release Model, Gets Renamed To TrueOS - Slashdot".
  15. (21 August 2018). "An Insight into the Future of TrueOS BSD and Project Trident - It's FOSS".
  16. Trident, Project. "Home :: Project Trident".
  17. [http://www.tuxmachines.org/node/6665 Personal Computing - BSD style. Tux Machines]
  18. [https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2007/06/pc-bsd-a-24-hour-test-drive/ 24-hour test drive: PC-BSD. Ars Technica]
  19. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20071001#review DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 222, 1 October 2007]
  20. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20080317#feature DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 244, 17 March 2008]
  21. [http://www.osnews.com/story/20351/Review_PC-BSD_7 Review: PC-BSD 7]
  22. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090413#feature DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 298, 13 April 2009]
  23. [https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/pc-bsd.html PC-BSD 7.1 Galileo - Review]
  24. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20100308#feature DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 344, 8 March 2010]
  25. [http://linuxbsdos.com/2010/02/26/pc-bsd-8-review/ PC-BSD 8 review. LinuxBSDos.com]
  26. [http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2010/08/17/pc-bsd-8-1-review/ PC-BSD 8.1 review. LinuxBSDos.com]
  27. [http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/03/03/pc-bsd-8-2-review/ PC-BSD 8.2 review. LinuxBSDos.com]
  28. [http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/pc-bsd-9.html PC-BSD 9.0 Isotope - Radioactive]
  29. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20120130#feature DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 441, 30 January 2012]
  30. "PC-BSD 9.0 Released!".
  31. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20130107#feature DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 489, 7 January 2013]
  32. "PC-BSD 9.1 Now Available".
  33. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20131028#feature DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 531, 28 October 2013]
  34. "Official PC-BSD Blog » PC-BSD 9.2-RELEASE Now Available".
  35. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20141006#feature DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 579, 6 October 2014]
  36. [http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/pc-bsd-10.html PC-BSD 10.0 Joule review - Troublesome]
  37. "Official PC-BSD Blog » PC-BSD 10.0-RELEASE is Now Available".
  38. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20141208#pcbsd DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 588, 8 December 2014]
  39. "Official PC-BSD Blog » PC-BSD 10.1-RELEASE Now Available".
  40. "Official PC-BSD Blog » PC-BSD 10.2-RELEASE Now Available".
  41. "PC-BSD Announce » PC-BSD 10.3-RELEASE now available!".
  42. [https://www.trueos.org/blog/trueos-stable-update-released-22217/ TrueOS Stable update released 2/22/17 - TrueOS]
  43. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20170501#trueos DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 710, 1 May 2017]
  44. [https://www.trueos.org/blog/trueos-stable-update-june-2-2017/ TrueOS STABLE Update: June 2, 2017]
  45. [https://www.trueos.org/blog/trueos-17-12-release/ TrueOS 17.12 Release - TrueOS]
  46. [https://web.trueos.org/blog/trueos-stable-18-03-release/ TrueOS STABLE 18.03 Release - TrueOS]
  47. [https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20180507#trueos DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 762, 7 May 2018]
  48. "Can I use Gnome with PC-BSD?". PC-BSD knowledge base.
  49. [http://ftp.pcbsd.org/pub/handbook/9.1/handbook_en_ver9.1.html#__RefHeading__20454_674241385 Minimum hardware requirements for PC-BSD 9.1]
  50. [http://ftp.pcbsd.org/pub/handbook/9.2/pcbsd9.2_handbook_en_ver9.2.html#Minimum%20System%20Requirements Minimum hardware requirements for PC-BSD 9.2]
  51. [https://web.archive.org/web/20161212161746/https://web.pcbsd.org/doc/11/html/introduction.html Introduction]
  52. Larabel, Michael. (23 April 2014). "PC-BSD Is Developing Its Own Desktop Environment".
  53. (4 July 2016). "PC-BSD's Lumina Desktop Now In Beta For v1.0". Phoronix.
  54. "Exploring and sharing Lumina".
  55. "Press And Legal - Legal notices". The PC‑BSD Project.
  56. "1. Introduction — TrueOS User Guide".
  57. [http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?action=dmesgd&do=index&fts=FreeBSD ''dmesgd'']
  58. (19 August 2020). "Hardware requirements on TrueOS wiki.".
  59. "What's New in 10.1".
  60. [http://wiki.osdev.org/RSDP RSDP]
  61. [http://wiki.osdev.org/XSDT XSDT]
  62. [http://wiki.osdev.org/RSDT RSDT]

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

2006-softwarefreebsdlinux-distributions-offering-kde-desktop-environmentdiscontinued_operating_systemssoftware-using-the-bsd-license