GUI Frontend for the OpenBSD package manager

nortonham

From Solene's page:

If you don't know Solene, she is a contributor to the OpenBSD community and started (iirc) the OpenBSD webzine. If you peruse her blog you will see lots of cool stuff about Obsd, Nixos, and general BSD and Linux topics.

I just tried this gui package manager (written with godot) and I really like it. Obviously, it's basically brand new, but it's still worth checking out. Just thought I would share.

edited because I can't add links correctly 🙃

rvp

nortonham Interesting! The FreeBSD folk are trying a new installer too.

rvp FreeBSD folk are trying a new installer too.

Web based

nortonham

rvp I read about that a while back; seemed like it received a mixed reception from the FreeBSD community.

JuvenalUrbino

rvp The FreeBSD folk are trying a new installer too.

FreeBSD has had the Qt5-based octopkg in repo for quite some time; I believe it's the GUI package manager of GhostBSD.
I liked the defunct PC-BSD's AppCafe much better though.
I believe that the Rodent file manager could install pkgng packages too with its pkg plugin at some point.

nortonham I read about that a while back; seemed like it received a mixed reception from the FreeBSD community.

Fact is that bsdinstall is very straightforward and beginner-friendly already. You can easily set up an encrypted ZFS root on UEFI and expect it to just work. It's really similar to Debian's and Solaris text installers in this regard.

rvp

pin Um, looks like it's stalled though, doesn't it?

rvp indeed.

nortonham

I'd be interested to see feedback from anyone who tries this

JuvenalUrbino

Looking at the code, with very little patching, this should work with NetBSD pkginstall tools as well. Gotta port the godot engine though first?
Since OpenBSD has fvwm(1) in base, I wonder if one could use FvwmForm (what's used for the keyboard bindings dialog in my latest FVWM screenshot).

nortonham

JuvenalUrbino

That's above my paygrade, but it would make sense if it was easily. All credit to Solene obviously. I think may prefer cli tools but I don't see anything wrong with simple gui tools for package management. It might even aid people in trying out the bsd's.

nortonham

JuvenalUrbino

Personally I don't see the need to change FBSD's installer, but I think it's been talked about. You're right, it's not much different than debian's, which I am very familiar with.

Jay

JuvenalUrbino GhostBSD has its own package manager using python : https://github.com/ghostbsd/software-station