Roadmap toward 1.0.0

[probonopd]

This list contains must-haves for 1.0.0.

Please feel free suggest must-haves for a 1.0.0 release. Once all must-haves are implemented, we may consider starting a test cycle toward a 1.0.0 release.

• Some way to update to new versions of helloSystem without reformatting the whole disk (see Need to think about an update strategy ISO#55)
• (...)

[kettle-7]

A simple way to change keyboard layout, time zone etc

[kettle-7]

i.e. doesn't need go linux and set efi variable cause that's far from simple

Perhaps a recovery/repair install from iso? If things break that would be very useful for users as opposed to needing to clean install everytime

Or even upgrade from bootable USB without overwriting documents, media, other .appfiles etc etc 🤘🏼

[alphamodh0]

Fast boot from iso, it takes a lot of time to begin (6GB RAM).

[probonopd]

0.7.0 should be very fast (under a minute) from Live ISO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tPMa7lqm4s

[kettle-7]

Fast boot from iso, it takes a lot of time to begin (6GB RAM).

afaik this is being worked on

…

[probonopd]

Please test 0G154 or later and report the boot time. Thanks!

[Slater91]

As for the boot time, there is this proposed patch that could/should improve the situation further: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D33802
Shall we move the discussion on boot time to a different/new issue?

[TriVoxel]

I know this may sound unpopular, but I think having a dark theme is very important for me as a computer user in general. It's what I use for everything and not having it here makes my system feel incomplete. I love the current look. Perhaps a simple invert of the colors would suffice for now.

As an artist, I make heavy use of hardware acceleration for video encoding, image editing, 3D modelling, etc. For me to consider a system stable, graphics programs need to be stable and have good hardware support. See issue 327 for more info. I think something could also be done about screen tearing. I run AMD and Intel hardware and notice screen/vsync issues. On Linux, there's an X configuration you need to add called "option: tearfree" or something for AMDGPU users. Besides that, graphics render pretty fast and programs feel very snappy. Just needs a little more polish.

A unified control panel would be really useful. Somewhere central to configure displays, keyboards, network, and bluetooth. Speaking of Bluetooth, a simple Bluetooth GUI program would be very vital to supporting a modern experience with many newer peripherals and gamepads.

Lastly, more robust notebook support. Every notebook I've used helloSystem on has worked really great for me. However, the mouse/touchpad settings could really benefit from a "natural scrolling" setting. Maybe even the ability to tweak scroll speeds and natural scrolling for both the X and Y axis of the touchpad. Not all touchpads work the same, so some may need more tweaking like this. The brightness keys work okay, but you need to smash them a hundred times to see any change and it flickers between brightness levels while doing this. If this could get cleaned up some, it would make a massive difference for usability on notebooks. Oh, and please add an indicator when a shortcut key modifies the brightness or volume. Not some huge overlay covering half the screen like Gnome and macOS, but a little popover near the corner of the screen, out of the way of everything.

This is not so much a necessity, but definitely a wish to have one day. FreeBSD takes a very long time to boot compared to Linux, Windows, or macOS. I don't know what the limits of fast boots on FreeBSD are but, if you could find some way to make FreeBSD boot faster... I don't understand why it loads so slowly. I can boot Ubuntu with Gnome straight to the desktop off my M.2 SSD in a few seconds. Meanwhile, FreeBSD/helloSystem takes nearly a minute on the same device. It doesn't boot much faster than the HDD in my low-end Intel laptop. I think maybe BSD is padding out time with sleep calls or wasting unnecessary time. Very weird behavior.

Great work on the system so far. I am totally stoked about its development and I'm using it as my daily driver for my laptop! I really love what you're doing with this project!

[alphamodh0]

Fix dock icons on pkg-installed apps.

[probonopd]

Fix dock icons on pkg-installed apps

They are working for me. Please file an issue with a way to reproduce the problem, thanks.

[kettle-7]

wasting unnecessary time

The FreeBSD boot system is confusing to say the least, and certainly not modern. It doesn't support parallel boot and a lot of other things without issues, the process control is primitive, ...

[TriVoxel]

This might not be a super high priority, but I noticed on my 4K monitor, everything is super tiny. Hi-dpi scaling would be a really great feature for us users with high-res monitors, as well as users with accessibility issues like poor eyesight.

[probonopd]

There is HiDPI autodetection but apparently it is not working for your display. Please open an issue, ideally mentioning the URL to a Hardware Probe of your system. Thanks!