FreeBSD

I own a desktop but have been wanting to switch to something more portable. I have been saving up for a laptop and, as such, will soon be installing and reconfiguring an OS from scratch (one of my favorite pastimes). I’m normally an Artix Linux user, but I’ve been becoming increasingly intrigued by BSD.

Arguably both the best and worst thing about Linux is that it’s just a kernel, which means there’s so many ways to do one thing (musl vs glibc, x vs wayland, pipewire vs pulse vs alsa and so on). This is great because it allows the ecosystem to innovate and stay modern and lets people like me kitbash a system that’s perfect for them. However, it also forces developers to build compatibility layers, distribute and manage multiple builds, etc. Generally, it’s just messy. Now, I could just use a “fully-featured” OS like Mint, Fedora, or Ubuntu, but I prefer lighter systems, and I absolutely love custom tailoring a system to fit my needs. I couldn’t tell you why.

From the research I’ve done, BSD seems to “solve” this issue. It’s a full operating system, so there’s a set way to handle things like networking, package management, etc. However, it doesn’t come with a GUI, so I get to rice and configure to my heart’s content. Is this assumption correct? Also, do you have any words of wisdom for a Linux user thinking about transitioning?

P.S. I’ve looked at the section on the website about laptop compatibility, but suggestions from you guys would also be great. I don’t have the most pocket change, so old-ish laptops are fine.

Gruß!

I'm asking like packages/ports to install and things to install. I don't have a desktop environment yet, but I'm thinking about using i3

FreeBSD has long been a top choice for IT professionals and organizations focused on servers and networking, and it is known for its unmatched stability, performance, and security. However, as technology evolves, FreeBSD faces a significant challenge: supporting modern laptops. To address this, the FreeBSD Foundation and Quantum Leap Research has committed $750,000 to improve

Comment by drewg123 on July 25, 2019

I met Linus at the Linux BOF at the 1994 Boston USENIX. Very ironically, I have Linus to thank for a long career using FreeBSD. It sounds like a cheap shot, but please hear me out:

I was sysadmin'ing a university stats department at the time, and NFS use was very important. I had been trying to use Linux on 486's, but performance of xdvi (with NFS mounted fonts) was abysmal. A 486 would take minutes to render the same page that a wimpy DECStation could render in a second. From tcpdump, I figured out it was because Linux did not do any sort of NFS caching at the time, and xdvi wandered around font files one byte at a time.

I asked Linus at the BOF when they planned to implement NFS. He told me NFS was unimportant, nobody used it, and so on.

I then attended the FreeBSD BOF where a clean shaven guy in a collared shirt was giving a power point presentation. I asked about NFS there, and was told it should work fine. When I got home from the conference, I switched the 486 to FreeBSD, and it worked just fine.

I eventually did OS research on FreeBSD, was one of a few people to port FreeBSD to the DEC Alpha, and I now do kernel performance work for a large CDN, where we run FreeBSD.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/23633869

How could I get started with BSD?

hello,

I want to learn and deep dive into BSD systems. I am a Linux user for more than 3 years and now I am curious to learn and use BSD since BSD is similar to Linux and has binary compatibility.

sadly my laptop wifi card isn't supported by any BSD systems. so I can't use it as my daily driver. so where should I go or do to learn more about BSD?

cross-posted from: https://blendit.bsd.cafe/post/140936

cross-posted from: https://blendit.bsd.cafe/post/140935

Since migrating many servers from Proxmox to FreeBSD, we have consistently felt that the VMs are more responsive. It's time to conduct some concrete tests.

Just a guide on how I got MariaDB working instead of SQLite for my PhotoPrism instance running on a FreeBSD jail.

Case Study: Maintaining the World’s Fastest Content Delivery Network at Netflix on FreeBSD

I saw that the FreeBSD Foundation announced it was working with Framework to certify their laptops to be able to run FreeBSD out of the box. I am currently running GhostBSD (FreeBSD-based for anyone who is unfamiliar) and was wondering some things about reporting bugs.

1. Do I just report them to the normal Bugzilla tracker? Or is there somewhere else I should report bugs?
2. Is it a problem that I'm running GhostBSD instead of normal FreeBSD? I know it is based on FreeBSD Stable, but I wanted to check in case it would be different enough that I should be reporting elsewhere.

Attached: 1 image News from the @FreeBSDFoundation "A frequent request from the #FreeBSD community and fan base is a curated list of laptops validated to run FreeBSD out of the box. To this end, we've recently begun discussions with one of our favorite laptop companies, Framework Stay tuned!" (Edited out Puter from the bird site)

Discovered their Mastodon profile while reading their recent blog post: 2023 in Review: Advocacy

cross-posted from: https://blendit.bsd.cafe/post/7865

cross-posted from: https://blendit.bsd.cafe/post/7858

We spent the weekend putting the final touches on Bastille 0.10.20231125!

Major features and fixes include:

• bootstrap #FreeBSD BETA and RC releases
• bootstrap EOL #FreeBSD releases (>=9.0)
• improved jail startup dependency using rcorder(8)
• combine create options, eg: -CV, -TB, etc
• fixes to bastille setup
• more!