FuryBSD 12.1

As he attempts another BSD-based desktop, Mayank Sharma is furious with himself for picking review candidates without first taking them for a spin.

- Mayank Sharma

We got off on the wrong foot here: there isn’t any inherent structural weakness in FuryBSD. In fact the project is headed by a long-time FreeBSD developer who knows what he’s doing. Although FuryBSD isn’t the only one to promise to deliver a functional desktop on top of a FreeBSD base, it distinguishes itself with its technical differences.

FuryBSD developers take pride in the fact that their OS doesn’t tinker with its FreeBSD base. This means with FuryBSD you are actually running a FreeBSD installation. The project considers itself a vessel to install FreeBSD. If the project disappears you could continue updating your installation as usual.

On the downside though, FuryBSD developers admit that their approach prevents them from being adventurous like their peers. This translates to FuryBSD being a very bare installation with very few components over and above the graphical desktop.

The latest release is based on FreeBSD 12.1 and packs in the latest quarterly packages from the FreeBSD repository. The OS is available with two desktop environments in separate ISO images. There’s one based on Xfce 4.14 that’ll perform well on under-equipped machines, while the other has KDE Plasma 5.17 and is meant for well-stocked computers.